Scent.Of.Violets

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• Commented on Where Have All the Women Gone?
  Arguing with moderators. Commenter now banned What I said had nothing to do with the thesis - which, parenthetically, I happen to agree with (an which I think is pretty obvious) -- and everything to do with that poster's...
• Commented on Where Have All the Women Gone?
  Since I specifically mentioned librarians acting as a filter -- twice -- and since you have apparently missed this -- twice -- would you please read what I write more carefully before commenting? It would save a lot of back-and-forth....
• Commented on Where Have All the Women Gone?
  [RED CARD - Deleted by moderator for gratuitous aggression in violation of moderation policy ]...
• Commented on Where Have All the Women Gone?
  [RED CARD - Deleted by moderator for gratuitous aggression in violation of moderation policy ]...
• Commented on Where Have All the Women Gone?
  Speaking as a self-described typical reader, I don't really pay attention to the author's gender[1] (I barely pay attention to names.) Nevertheless -- as I've already indicated -- most of what I see on our local library shelves is male...
• Commented on Where Have All the Women Gone?
  My, my, my Kristine. I think you've just lost a sale. Please, don't get hostile. Though admittedly you're not the first one....
• Commented on Where Have All the Women Gone?
  Libraries. A sample size of two (an admittedly small sample) where I know for a fact the people responsible for new acquisitions are all female . . . end up ordering at least two male authors to every female one...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  That's pretty much my point. Is there a Ghod of Ghod of Ghod of . . . which verges on the absolute might be another way of defining the object under consideration. Me, I scoff at mere physical manipulation. I'd...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  . . . at some level of abstraction. Paging Greg Egan, we're getting close to his dust hypothesis and what it means to 'implement' a program, the implications of which are explored in his Permutation City....
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  I'm pretty sure we moderns would qualify as 'sufficiently powerful beings' to any of a number of goat-herding tribes living in the Mid-East three or four thousand years ago. Somehow I get the impression that you think we don't clear...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  If the underlying reality is continuous at all scales, i.e., based on real numbers which may have an infinite decimal expansion, then you've passed beyond the bounds of Turing computability. Rudy Rucker's White Light is an amusing example. In fact,...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  Philip Jose Farmer had a series, World of Tiers, where the head guys -- the Lords, as they styled themselves -- were powerful enough to create new universes, alter the laws of physics at a whim, and so on and...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  So if we poor hominids manage to travel ftl and have sufficiently advanced replicators ala Star Trek (which series also had time travel as an occasional if not common plot point) you would consider us to be deities? How Mormon...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  Here's an online and very simple account about the economic rivalry between St. Louis and Chicago. Note that St. Louis had if anything a superior location WRT the waterways and that Chicago eventually got the upper hand due to historical...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  You seem to be contradicting yourself - now it's the railroads choosing Chicago. Which is sort of right. What's wrong is that they also 'chose' St. Louis. This is all easily researched and I'm not going to get into a...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  Uh huh. Wayback machine: "Grrk. From your postings, I rather doubt that you do, either. It doesn't help that 90% of 'computer science' in this area is just plain wrong, because the authors are very poor mathematicians suffering from advanced...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  But how is that proof of some sort of deity rather than a sufficiently powerful, sufficiently advanced being?...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  I repeat, there is no connection between the waterways. Look it up if you don't believe me. That was the whole point of building the canal. You didn't think that was natural, did you? In fact, the city goes back...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  Nope. For any definition of Ghod. Since Greg said, "Usual quibble at this point. If BigSkyFairy of any sort whatsoever, exists ... Then why is he/she/it/they not detectable?", it is up to him to supply all the relevant material. And...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  Sigh. Actually, whether or not P=NP is considered an extremely important problem, so important that it's one of the Millenium Prize Problems. In fact, if a constructive proof of P=NP is ever found, a lot of people think that the...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  Chicago was built because you can transship on the Great Lakes to the Mississippi river. As a recent immigrant to Chicago who has to know more about the city than the native-borns . . . so not true. There isn't...
• Commented on Ia, Ia, Google Fthagn
  I never get a straight answer when I ask this one: What observations would be necessary and sufficient to prove the existence of Ghod? It's important to get this nailed down before any evidence is presented for its existence. Please...
• Commented on Two Thoughts
  Er, but for this to be useful, a minimal subset of the original rules must still apply. Since CD doesn't feel bound by even the most minimal rules of rational discourse, commenters here are in the position of playing Calvin...
• Commented on Two Thoughts
  There's nothing strange about R4 appearing to be a huge anomaly, any more than there is in 12 being a highly-composite number while 11 and 13 are both prime. Or are you suggesting that God (*) designed R4 to be...
• Commented on Two Thoughts
  The way I heard it, two professors were sitting in a bar arguing about students these days and their sad lack of even the most basic mathematical knowledge when their waitress -- an obvious college student -- approached. To prove...
• Commented on Two Thoughts
  I don't know if it's that particular individual; just that it has the same whiff. That's why I mentioned Terry Austin of usenet fame, whose entire schtick was to get you to engage with him. Once you did, you lost,...
• Commented on Two Thoughts
  Heh. Me, I take it to be Benjanun Sriduangkaew/CrackedMoon/RequiresHate performance theater. Anybody remember Terry Austin from back in the day? In any event, it's not interesting enough to me to do anything other than scroll past what is after all...
• Commented on Two Thoughts
  The point is that Tim Worstall, the author of that article, is taking the same view of any naive investor in a financial bubble, indeed of any new drug addict: the crash hasn't been a problem yet for him, therefore...
• Commented on Two Thoughts
  Tim Worstall is an idiot who opines with great confidence on subjects he knows nothing about. I don't know if he's had any formal economics training, but he once tried to pass himself off as a solar energy expert. Tough...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Equoid
  No, it's easy to trisect an angle in classical Euclidean geometry. You just can't do it if you restrict your tools to a compass and straightedge....