Episoder
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I just saw on YouTube an interview to Bjarne Stroustrup. Stroustrup began developing C++ in 1979 (then called âC with Classesâ), and, in his own words, âinvented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation⊠chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee.â Stroustrup also wrote a textbook for the language in 1985, The C++ Programming Language.
The thing I found most interesting was the assertion by Stroustrup that higher levels of abstraction (or maybe the right level?) produces more compact and efficient code. There are two things that need to be matched, on one side the idea of what needs to be done, that is in the mind of the programmer, on the other side is the machine instructions that are executed by the computer. The function of the programming language, or rather the compiler, is to allow the programmer to express his idea clearly, so that the optimizer will produce an executable that its reliable, efficient, and that corresponds to the idea of the programmer.
According to Stroustrup, reliability and efficiency are systems properties, and the way to achieve them is by simplification. The central idea is to have a flexible and effective type implementation that allows the programmer to match the types of his application to his needs without a performance penalty.
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A US army manual says, fair enough, that terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation,coercion, or instilling fear. Thatâs terrorism. If you take a look at the definition of Low-Intensity Warfare, which is official US policy, you find that it is just another name for terrorism. Thatâs why all countries call whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter-terrorism.
In December 1987, at the peak of the first war on terrorism, thatâs when the furor over the plague was peaking, The United Nations General Assembly passed a very strong resolution against terrorism, condemning the plague in the strongest terms, calling on every state to fight against it in every possible way. It passed unanimously. One country, Honduras, abstained. Two votes against; the usual two, United States and Israel. Why should the United States and Israel vote against a major resolution condemning terrorism in the strongest terms, in fact pretty much the terms that the Reagan administration was using? Well, there is a reason. There was one paragraph in that long resolution which said that nothing in this resolution infringes on the rights of people struggling against racist and colonialist regimes or foreign military occupation to continue with their resistance with the assistance of others, other states, states outside in their just cause. Well, the United States and Israel canât accept that. There was another one at the time. Israel was occupying Southern Lebanon and was being combated by what the US calls a terrorist force, Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded in driving Israel out of Lebanon. -
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BloombergBusiness reported a sharp uptick in crime rates among senior citizens around the world. In South Korea for example, crimes committed by people 65 and over rose 12.2 percent from 2011 to 2013, which includes a shocking 40 percent increase in violent crime, such as murder, robbery, and rape, according to the Korea Times.
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Every day, 100 Americans are killed by gun violence, and hundreds more are injured. While most of these shootings are not in public schools, children safety at school is a major concern. Gun control measures are currently political non-starters and people are turning to palliatives like bulletproof backpacks among other desperate solutions in an attempt to protect their children.
Sales of bulletproof backpacks have spiked almost 300 percent following a spate of school shootings and the recent attacks in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Yet, none of the backpacks currently on the market would have stopped a single rifle round coming from those gunmen.
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Eagle (Arn) is a symbol of leadership and forsight but man knows that his roots are closer to the wolf. The wolf is very dear to man and represent the purity of heart he has lost in his quest for godness. The wolf is a loner that fights to death for the clan if need comes.
Gray wolves are social predators that live in nuclear families consisting of a mated pair, their offspring and, occasionally, adopted immature wolves. They primarily feed on ungulates, which they hunt by wearing them down in short chases. Gray wolves are typically apex predators throughout their range, with only humans and tigers posing significant threats to them.
The genetic relationship between wolves and dogs was elucidated by Robert WAYNE and Carles VILĂ, opening the possibility that the split between wolves and dogs may date back as far as 135,000 years before present. Such a long common history of dogs and modern humans begs the question as to the dogâs part in the endeavor of humans to take control of the world, and led to the formulation of a hypothetical âlupiïŹcationâ of human behavior, habits, and even ethics.
There is something in the bond among wolves and between dogs and humans that goes beyond that between us and our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzees. Here we are not talking about intelligence, but about what we may poetically associate with kindness of heart.
Wolves were pack animals. They survive as a result of teamwork. They hunt together, den together, raise pups together. This ancient social order has been helpful in the domestication of the dog. Chimpanzees are individualists. They are boisterous and volatile in the wild. They are always on the lookout for opportunities to get the better of each other. They are not pack animals. If you watch wolves within a pack, nuzzling each other, wagging their tails in greeting, licking and protecting the pups, you see all the characteristics we love in dogs, including loyalty. If you watch wild chimps, you see the love between mother and offspring, and the bonds between siblings. Other relationships tend to be opportunistic. And even between family members, disputes often rise that may even lead to ïŹghts.
The good relationship as we have with our dogs is not related to intelligence, but to the desire to help, to be obedient, to gain our approval.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his 1841 essay Compensation, wrote: âIn the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.â
In 1916, Lily Hardy Hammond wrote, âYou donât pay love back; you pay it forward.âWoody Hayes (February 14, 1913 â March 12, 1987) was a college football coach who is best remembered for winning five national titles and 13 Big Ten championships in 28 years at The Ohio State University. He misquoted Emerson as having said âYou can pay back only seldom. You can always pay forward, and you must pay line for line, deed for deed, and cent for cent.â He also shortened the (mis)quotation into âYou can never pay back; but you can always pay forwardâ and variants.
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My grandfather Justino was the Benjamin of a long list of siblings. The older ones were more surrogate parents than brothers and sisters. The records show that he was born in Cameron County, Texas, in 1897, however the family folklore says he falsified the records to enlist for World War I when he was a minor. Justino grew up in San Benito, a typical Texas town of the beginning of the twentieth century, where the railroad tracks marked the segregation boundary, on one side was San Benito, for Texans and Mexicans, and on the other, was Harlingen, for the new conquerors.
Grandpaâs family had been in Texas for over two hundred years and they were Mexican in the sense that Texas was once part of Mexico. My grandfather would refer to himself as Texan, without qualifications, to Mexican migrants as âpelonesâ and to the invaders as âgabachos.â
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Settler-colonial societies eliminate the indigenous population. Thomas Jefferson said, well, we have no choice but to exterminate the indigenous population, the Native Americans; the reason is theyâre attacking us. Why are they attacking us? Because weâre taking everything away from them. But since weâre taking their land and resources away and they defend themselves, we have to exterminate them.
The settler-colonial societies are a striking illustration of, first of all, the massive destructive power of European imperialism. If some extraterrestrial observer were watching this, theyâd think the species was insane. And, in fact, it is. But the insanity goes back to the basic institutional structure. Thatâs the way it works. Itâs built into the institutions. Itâs one of the reasons itâs going to be very hard to change.
The U.S. was founded on two racist principles: the system of slavery, the source of much of its wealth (and Englandâs too), and the need to rid the national territory of Native Americans, whom the Declaration of Independence explicitly describes as âthe merciless Indian savages,â and whom the framers saw as barring the expansion of the âsuperiorâ race. Immigrants were supposed to be basically âAnglo-Saxon,â in accord with racist myths of the founding fathers that persisted through the 19th century.
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Going âdown the rabbit holeâ has become a common metaphor in popular culture, symbolizing everything from exploring a new world, taking drugs, or delving into the unknown. (Think The Matrix, where âfollowing the white rabbitâ and later choosing the âred pillâ starts Neo off on a journey of philosophical realization with no return.) InAliceâs Adventures in Wonderland, the rabbit hole is the place where it all begins. Itâs Aliceâs unthinking decision to follow the White Rabbit that leads to all her adventures. The pop culture version of this symbol perhaps doesnât consider the âunthinkingâ nature of this choice quite enough. After all, Aliceâs decision is foolhardy; if this werenât a magical fantasyland, sheâd probably be killed by the fall, she has no idea where sheâs going, what sheâs facing, or how to get home. Going down the rabbit hole is a one-way trip â the entry, but not the exit, to the fantasy world.
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Humans are instinctively tribal and violent. However instinctive, the tribalism of targeted groups can be manipulated. For example, in my hometown, people have been divided into two groups according to soccer team allegiance.
So how is it that something so important to our flourishing as a species â being part of a group, or tribe â is simultaneously one of the primary forces tearing the social fabric apart?
At the core of tribalism is not truth, or objective reality, but beliefs. And the one thing you cannot do is reason anyone out of their beliefs. Beliefs are not arrived at with reason, and so cannot be dismantled by logic and data.
The human mind has not developed or evolved to get to the truth but to stay safe. We use reason in order to get along with other people, to be part of a tribe, which in turn is crucial, not just to our sociable natures, but to survival itself.
With survival at stake it is easy to see why the context of the tribe, and the safety it represents, matters more than logic. Because tribes represent safety in the most fundamental sense (survival), agreeing with the tribe is a safe default position for group members, even when it doesnât make sense to do so.
Humans are social animals, and itâs our natural instinct to be emphatic with others. Itâs natural for us to bond by kinship. Unfortunately the same tribal instinct hampers our ability to recognize the essential and vital global brotherhood of man. We cling to nationality, religion, and many artificial walls we build around us that compromise our chances for long term survival (https://arnulfo.wordpress.com/2015/12/12/merry-xmas/). However, the feeling of group identity can be manipulated. To always have a favorite football team have been promoted as an essential part of our deep identity. But one has to be careful; it might not be healthful to display the wrong loyalty in the wrong bar.
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Gun ownership is a divine right and that the second amendment was inspired by God because the US is chosen land, a place of a covenant between God and the true believers.
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During the miserable trench warfare of WWI, a night of humanity offered some hope of peace. Arthur Conan Doyle called it âone human episode amid all the atrocities.â
After war, some soldiers become peace activists. All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im Westen nichts Neues, lit. 'In the West Nothing New') is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front. The book and its sequel, The Road Back (1930), were among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany.
Smedley Darlington Butler was a United States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. He wrote War is a racket.
Howard Zinn is perhaps best known for his People's History of the United States, a book that has featured in The Simpsons and was recommended by Matt Damon's character in the film Good Will Hunting. In The Bomb, Zinn puts two essays side by side, one entitled "Hiroshima, breaking the silence", the other "The bombing of Royan". As a young man eager to be demobbed, Zinn recalls celebrating the dropping of the atomic bomb; it meant the end of a war he did not wish to return to. He had taken part in the bombing of the French town of Royan just three months earlier. The essays revisit that unthinking celebration and desire to follow orders of those months in 1945. Using historical evidence, it also argues that neither mission was necessary and asks what prompted military action that would transcended military logic and moral sensibilities.
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Speaking of brutal Nicaraguan dictator Somoza, Harry Truman is supposed to have said âHeâs a bastard, but heâs our bastard.â This quote is attributed to Truman, FDR, and Nixon. This is a broad chronological range, because there were actually three Somozas: Anastasio Somoza Garcia, who fathered Luis Somoza Debayle and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the Somoza dynasty that ruled Nicaragua from the mid 1930s through the late 1970s.
The Marines invaded Nicaragua in 1912 and stayed until 1933, fighting but never defeating the revolutionary Augusto Sandino. They created the Nicaraguan National Guard and installed Anastasio Somoza Garcia in power. Then Sandino, who had signed a truce and put down his arms, was assassinated by Somoza. In 1935, General Smedley Butler, who led the Marines into Nicaragua, said:
â[I was] a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for the banks. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism â I helped purify Nicaragua for [an] international banking house.â
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The title âLord of the fliesâ is a translation of the Hebrew BaÂŽalzevuv, a devil whose name suggests decay, destruction, demoralization, and panic. GoldingÂŽs Beelzebub is the anarchic, amoral driving force whose function seems to insure the survival of the individual. The tenets of civilization and intelligence from a veneer over the fury and the mire of human veins.
Nonetheless, Golding says that he does not know really where the story comes from and advices the reader that his own interpretation is the right one, even above that of the writer.
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âWhat I think an awakening really involves is a re-examination of our common sense. Weâve got all sorts of ideas built into us which seem unquestioned, obvious. And our speech reflects them; its commonest phrases. âFace the facts.â As if they were outside you. As if life were something they simply encountered as a foreigner. âFace the facts.â Our common sense has been rigged, you see? So that we feel strangers and aliens in this world, and this is terribly plausible, simply because this is what we are used to. Thatâs the only reason.â
Alan Watts
Alan Watts is one of the most widely read philosophers of the 20th century.
