I recently re-read this as well as Robinson Crusoe. I find both to be very interesting in that you get an understanding of dominant philosophies of the time, the traditions of life, language and more subtly writing; how all of those developed together and reflected upon each other.

But they are also both incredibly dull. I sort of wish I could read it as someone from that era read it, because I imagine it might be a little like seeing a film with revolutionary use of new film tech like sound or colour for the first time. It might be another old western, but it's engaging with parts of your brain you're not used to using in that particular medium. Whereas we're used to advanced and refined versions of the same thing, because it influenced so many.

I will never understand why people do this and think it's funny. Ho hum, each to our own.

For about 10 years now i've had severe stomach problems, to the point of sometimes being all but housebound. At some point in my attempts to try and find some resolution, i came across the idea of a gut flora transplant.

I never did it because you've got to find someone healthy with a great diet and i suppose bowel regularity, which is difficult in itself because those people are rare and the subject is embarrassing.

But if you're crippled with stomach aches, woken up 7 times a night going to the toilet (and then not even doing anything), then putting someone else's shit into your own bum is nothing. As Terry Pratchett once said about Alzheimer's - it's a desperate situation, and he'd eat the rotting arsehole out of a dead mole if it meant a fighting chance.

For anyone interested, i stopped eating gluten for a while and had minor improvement. When i ate gluten, i'd get feverish and flu-like, joint pain, headaches, sweats and excruciating stomach pain. I figured it was coeliac disease and hoped i would fully recover before long. I didn't, but 2 weeks ago i also cut potato (nightshade vegetable) from my diet and i have been stomach ache free since (that is, 75%+ of the time my stomach feels painless). Apparently lectins are problematic.

If anyone has ever had severe pain for a very long time, they'll know the utter relief and joy of being pain free. It's hard to describe, but for a few days to a week, it's a euphoric feeling.

Imagine saying this but not making a connection between violent societies and access to machines designed for killing.

"In Japan, there are less guns. Japan has less gun violence."
-- Yes but you can't make that comparison because the US is more violent.

???

Does anyone remember the early days of bots in FPS games? I'm not impressed by the bot winning because of those early FPS bots.

Walk round a corner with an old fashioned Quake 1 bot? BAM you're dead as soon as a pixel of your head appears (headshots existed in QTF); you probably won't even see the bot because of your refresh rate.

The learning is incredibly impressive, but as someone said earlier the impressive thing would be filling in as a player in a 5v5, or maybe a team of them. I'd always expect a bot to win a duel of reactions unless they are programmed to miss. The bot makes its decisions and performs them instantly, so if you make better decisions than it, they still must be better enough that you can beat that huge speed advantage.

"if someone had been able to take Hitler aside BEFORE all the horrors of WW2 and been able to convince him to lay off the genocide"

This is the pacifists dilemma though. There were numerous attempts to sway hitler from his course. Neville Chamberlain famously celebrating the Munich Agreement. At the end of the day, you can't peacefully stop someone if they are intent on causing violence.

I don't think you can really go down this road, either. It's a fun thought experiment, but it requires knowledge you only have once it's too late. You can't talk to the one kid who will grow up to be adolf hitler. There's very likely one out there now that we can't stop because we don't know them.

"At that point, violence is your only recourse to stop the atrocities."

The pacifist's dilemma and this combined, to me, put this in a morally ambiguous place. If you accept that you can't stop someone bent on violence, and nazis arrive announcing that they are, then is it better for a little violence, visited upon those who pursue violent ends? Or is it better that we wait and see the violence occur before we react to it?

On further introspection, i think both of our positions exist in a similar ambiguity - you need to know who to speak to before you know who to speak to, and i need to know who to correctively punch before i know who to correctively punch. Yours might be better for short term, worse for long term. Mine might be worse for short term, better for long term.

In truth, i probably lean more towards agreeing with you, but i'm trying to point out that even though we think "be civil" is the best option, it doesn't have any divine right to be the best option. The best option (we would probably agree) is the one that causes the least overall harm, and we don't *know* what that is, and never can. I think it's important we reconsider accepted wisdom like that. (which is really why i decided to argue it..in honesty, i probably feel the same as you; disapprove but not loudly. My main problem with the position i'm taking is - how do you *stop* the nazi punchers once the nazis are suitably punched? And when do i become the nazi?)

@transmorpher
"leaving yourself and your loved ones open to the same treatment next time someone disagrees with one of your views."

I made it very clear in earlier comments that i'm only ok with someone being punched if they are openly calling for genocide and death to people. I'm ok with you ripping that argument apart (because i think it can be.. i'm leaving myself open on purpose), but that isn't what you've done. I don't accept there's an equivalence between my harmless beliefs and a genocidal maniac's.

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick at some points, so let me just clear that up first:

"Woah, woah, woah! There's a pretty big difference between saying it's not ok to assault someone and expressing support for them."
-- I referred to the modern nazi who supports them, not you for thinking it is wrong to punch. You are not a nazi supporter because of your stance. A nazi of course supports hitler, etc.

So hopefully this clears up:
"The law has nothing to do with it. It is unethical to assault someone simply for stating their beliefs."
-- My point was that they are stating their support for genocide and harming other people. It's not just a belief, it's a desire to exterminate, alienate and persecute an ethnic group. They aren't shy about their template for society, they fly the swastika flag clearly and sieg heil and whatnot.

"Here we are, 70 years after the biggest armed conflict the world has ever seen.... and yet we still have Nazis."
-- This implies that you think being 'nicer to Hitler' (i.e. not solved it with violence) would have gotten rid of them yet you contradict this later on. Otherwise you must accept that violence was the most successful solution, and you are equivocating over semantics with this point. In as far as any ideology (which only really latches itself on generic human mindsets like xenophobia, and is therefore inalienable, a form of nazism will occur by some other name in any social group*) may be "defeated", it was defeated.

I accept that you think it is unethical to punch them. I'm not saying i want chaos in the streets where mobs go around tearing suspected nazis to bits; that's why i'm not asking for a law change and why i won't be opening with violence towards nazis. I'm just saying if a nazi happens to get punched, on balance, it's probably ok.

* - just expanding on this. It's a bit like trying to 'defeat' religion. If you stamped out any sign of all religions in the world, all the imagery and documents and let's say memories too. Before long, religions would form because the human brain is drawn to those ideologies; that's why so many diverse ones formed and still do. And as you originally said defeatable, if it isn't defeatable (because it's inalienable) then you're saying your own point is wrong.

TL;DR sorry for the wall of text, ignore me

Yet it is how they were ultimately defeated.

I don't mind swimming against the stream on this one; i think it's fine to punch nazis.

When you express your support for nazis, you're not just saying you have an alternative viewpoint. You are saying that you support the ideals of the old nazi party, you support Hitler & his goals, you want to see people exterminated in a genocidal system and you celebrate that such a system existed. You are actively pursuing a course of action that, if successful, will result in the deaths of millions of people. Your goal is to kill people.

I don't think there's any comparison to the same kind of treatment of the Phelps family. They celebrate death, misery and hate, but they never killed millions of Jews and other 'undesirables.' They are unconscionable bastards, but that's it. Your end goal in supporting them is not violence & genocide.

I can justify breaking the law to punch a nazi in the same way i can justify breaking the law to protest a fascist government. Laws aren't divine or sacrosanct, and they certainly aren't constant. Our oligarchs meddle with them on a daily basis. The right thing to do may not always be the legal thing to do, and you should not rely on your government to decide right and wrong for you (that's what nazi germany thrived on - 'i was only obeying orders'). The "law" argument will never convince me.

But i might be convinced for other reasons.

@bcglorf

I'll have to take your word for how they're marked on this, because you've talked to the teachers and whatnot, and i've spent 20 mins looking at the document without finding any regulations on it. I spent most of my time reading the examples. The rest was chock full of text and a bit hard to digest so like a true scientist i gave up.

I can't defend that, i think in essence they've got a very good idea. I've always been good with maths, and i remember when i was learning what i thought were hard bits, i'd find shortcuts a lot like they suggest. And by luck that helped me a lot with more advanced maths. I think these methods are great to set people up for algebra, infinitesimals and therefore calculus. But it's also a very top heavy burden to place on a learning mind, and you're presuming they'd have a use for it, or have the knack for it. And then if you test them on it, you're testing their ability to do stuff they don't need yet.

The way you say it, it's like it was designed by someone with a bit of a gift for maths but no idea about teaching, or kids, or how other people think. These are great ideas for pushing kids to better understanding though. Could easily confuse people.

Could we see some evidence of a curriculum that asks for proof in the form of reducing all numbers to 1s and summing a list of 1s?

It sounds utterly mental, to the point i can't believe it without proof. I could believe that they may ask a kid to do that once or twice, with small numbers, to show that they understand from first principles what is actually happening, and perhaps to teach them to count better. But as a way of teaching to add, i need to see it to believe it.

Looks like he filmed it in the same room as ISIS film those "we hate the west" videos.

It's PR for the community and its spirit really.

To be honest it's not the average civilian i'd be worried about in any modern town, even in deprived areas. It's the pickpocket gangs, and drunken louts that can be more prevalent at night. I think the average every day civilian would at the very least be fair to the man in those circumstances, if not make some attempt to help him.

He got eaten by the bear, and neither he nor his camera were ever seen again.

I'm going to have a really big problem with this show if it's in the JJ Abrams style with lens-flare and characters constantly running from scene to scene to instill a sense of urgency, descending into mindless fast-and-the-furious action as the series progresses.

The main character (the one from Walking Dead) is a solid choice, which was necessary in a show that had such strong female leads as Jeri Ryan and the incredible Kate Mulgrew.

That's why Gilmour's solos are so good! Everyone talks about people with insane technical skill, but this... well, it just sounds really, really good. And that's what it's about!