sharingknowledge

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

Reading about free software specifically and free culture in general causes a dangerous uptick in my idealism index. Idealism in the sense of hoping and even believing that we can all get along. (Somehow. Someday.) That we can help each other. I think I had a healthy share of idealism growing up but gradually over the years I’ve addressed this vulnerability by developing an outer shell of jaded cynicism. It’s much more comforting to have no hope than to have hopes that can be crushed. However, there is a good chance with this strategy that your heart will shrink a couple of sizes.

But then I read essays by Richard Stallman, listen to speeches by Eben Moglen, and read and listen to many other hopeful voices, and I start to see something better. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. Which of course is dangerous. You leave yourself open to ridicule if you believe. You might be dismissed as being naive. To which of course we should say, “So what?” I want to believe that we can do better.

The great moral question of the twenty-first century is: If all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information, can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone — if everyone can have everything, everywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? If you could make lamb chops in endless numbers by the mere pressing of a button, there would be no moral argument for hunger ever, anywhere. I see no system of moral philosophy generated by the economy of the past that could evolve a principle to explain the moral legitimacy of denial in the presence of infinite profusion.

Rastafari, a religion that emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s, considers Ethiopia its spiritual home and that country's former emperor, Haile Selassie, a divine figure. Up to 10 percent of Jamaicans identify themselves as Rastas, but they are virtually unheard of in Roman Catholic Italy.

The "90–9–1" version of this rule states that 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing.

This can be compared with the similar rules known to information science, such as the 80/20 rule known as the Pareto principle, that 20% of a group will produce 80% of the activity, however the activity may be defined.

Actually, scientists are finding that the ability to detect sarcasm really is useful. For the past 20 years, researchers from linguists to psychologists to neurologists have been studying our ability to perceive snarky remarks and gaining new insights into how the mind works. Studies have shown that exposure to sarcasm enhances creative problem solving, for instance. Children understand and use sarcasm by the time they get to kindergarten. An inability to understand sarcasm may be an early warning sign of brain disease.

23 percent of the time that the phrase “yeah, right” was used, it was uttered sarcastically. Entire phrases have almost lost their literal meanings because they are so frequently said with a sneer. “Big deal,” for example. When’s the last time someone said that to you and meant it sincerely? “My heart bleeds for you” almost always equals “Tell it to someone who cares,” and “Aren’t you special” means you aren’t.

Sarcasm seems to exercise the brain more than sincere statements do. Scientists who have monitored the electrical activity of the brains of test subjects exposed to sarcastic statements have found that brains have to work harder to understand sarcasm. That extra work may make our brains sharper, according to another study. College students in Israel listened to complaints to a cellphone company’s customer service line. The students were better able to solve problems creatively when the complaints were sarcastic as opposed to just plain angry. Sarcasm “appears to stimulate complex thinking and to attenuate the otherwise negative effects of anger,” according to the study authors.

The mental gymnastics needed to perceive sarcasm includes developing a “theory of mind” to see beyond the literal meaning of the words and understand that the speaker may be thinking of something entirely different. A theory of mind allows you to realize that when your brother says “nice job” when you spill the milk, he means just the opposite, the jerk.

Sarcastic statements are sort of a true lie. You’re saying something you don’t literally mean, and the communication works as intended only if your listener gets that you’re insincere. Sarcasm has a two-faced quality: it’s both funny and mean. This dual nature has led to contradictory theories on why we use it.

The answer is "tidal friction." Back in the day (as they say), the moon spun with respect to the Earth, so people (if there had been people around) could see all sides of the moon, if they looked long enough. But the Moon is not totally solid. It is a mass of dust, sand and rocks that can change shape, just like a pile of dust, sand and rocks can change shape on the Earth. The Earth's gravitational pull on the Moon actually makes the Moon bulge towards the Earth very slightly. The bulge is called a "tidal bulge." The overall effect is to make the Moon a kind of oval, with the long axis pointing towards the Earth. But the Moon rotated with respect to the Earth (you have to say "with respect to the Earth, because the Moon is, even now, rotating with respect to the Sun; rotation, like all motion, is relative), so as a new part of the Moon's surface rotated around to face the Earth, it would bulge, then settle back down as it rotated away from the Earth, kind of like a "wave" in a sports stadium. The overall effect was to knead the Moon like it was a ball of play-doh, raising its internal temperature slightly. But there is a lot of friction when rocks and dust rub against each other, so that would tend to slow down the rotation. Further, the bulge actually lagged a little bit. The materials making up the Moon don't respond instantly to gravity. So the bulge actually wasn't quite in line with the Earth, but was kind of running to catch up with it. The Earth pulled on that bulge more than on the non-bulging parts, so that further slowed down the Moon's rotation.  This mechanism was significant only early in the Moon's history, since the effect becomes smaller as the Moon's rotation slows. So over millennia, the Moon's rotation slowed down and stopped. The bulge stopped moving around the Moon's surface and settled in one spot, incidentally locking that spot in line with the Earth.

Pollen from both environments indicates that temperatures on Antarctica reached up to 21C in summer and were warmer than 10°C even during the coldest and darkest months of the year.

“RMT remains available for talks and with Boris Johnson directly intervening in the bus dispute there is no excuse for him, as chair of TfL, not to get involved in settling this issue.”

Instead, it looks like a coordinated attack, orchestrated by the Tory mayor, looking for a political fight with Unite and London’s bus workers. Even ‘Boris bike’ workers are getting a £500 Olympic award.

ther London transport workers – such as on the underground, Docklands Light Railway and some network rail services – are to receive bonuses of between £500 and £900 in recognition of the expected extra workload during the period of the games.