Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I love taking tests, but that question (whether I love taking tests) wasn't on the test.

I scored 26, but at times in my life I would have scored higher.
The test seems not to bear much relation to autism though. It is usually a very serious condition in which you can't focus on other people or even a task for any longer than a few seconds. It is not the same as introversion.

I am INTP or INFP.

I got a six.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by millennialX

Again, I only have my nephew as an example, but it seems like he can concentrate on one item for an almost uncomfortable long time. He can be very one track minded and persistent at trying to put a complicated puzzle together or build something with his toys and blocks. If one thing is imperfect, he almost freaks out...takes everything apart and tries again until he can get it right in one period. He was worse when he was younger and now doesn't get as frustrated and has more patience with himself.

A good trait in, say, a musician. or anyone else whose passion requires the infamous 10,000 hours of practice until you get it right.

Originally Posted by Odin

That reminds me of a English-descendant conlang project I'm working on, with "would" becoming a subjunctive prefix.

Would that it were true! But the way English is going, what you'll get is "I goed to the store for 12 ball's of yarn and weaved an afgan."

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Would that it were true! But the way English is going, what you'll get is "I goed to the store for 12 ball's of yarn and weaved an afgan."

LOL, "go" becoming regularized is not very likely, it's used to much.

One interesting thing happening in my dialect is the -en ending spreading to past participles where they don't belong like wildfire: "I've boughten", "I've callen", etc.

That's odd. Only thing around here, that I notice is: You becoming ya and the g in -ing suffixes gettin' dropped.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Odin

David Kirby is a quack in the same category as Andrew Wakefield.

Whatever. Please read this and tell me that the folks at UC Davis are also quacks. You sound like you have your mind made up, but I hope to slip this information through somewhere. When you get to the site, search the news releases for the word "autism". There is lots of interesting research being done at the MIND center.

James50

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Less socially adept males. Socially non-adept females may not be able to get good mates, or any at all (though I got one. Kept him for over 20 years, too.) but they can always get laid. In fact, are at risk for it.

All of which may be the conduit to keep the trait alive, but the actual condition uncommon. I think those of us who are borderline may carry the trait but not the full-blown condition. If that's true then it's likely that, throughout history, we have procreated less on average, than your average member of the species. Now, we live in a world that values our positive traits, so we are more socially active than we were in the past. Most importantly, we can find others of similar nature but of the opposite sex. Why wouldn't that create a boom in autism?

Of course, nothing exists in isolation. There may be an environmental element too; one that may affect the intensity of the condition. I just can't see it as determinant. I still think you have to be predisposed.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

A good and valid point. Didn't you go to school, Odin, during the Bush administration? And didn't you get some form of financial aid (a clear pay-off) from the federal government under Bush during that time?

Clearly, all your statements are being made at the behest of your paymaster, Karl Rove. After all, you have a clear, financial connection to his organization.


...see how silly that argument is?

There is a significant difference. Odin was getting a small portion of a pot of money that's being thrown more or less indiscriminatingly at anyone who asks for it. The government is not really paying us to learn a specific state-approved curriculum, nor to speak on behalf of a cause.

Research funding is just a little more focused, and it makes sense to follow the money in this case. Which is not to say that everything they do is automatically invalid: their research has to be taken seriously and addressed. But it's still worth noting where their money came from.

And I'll also offer you that this applies just as much to the other side. But, that side is much bigger and their funding source doesn't appear to have a particular motivation for wanting people to believe in climate change.

Originally Posted by Silifi

The government is not really paying us to learn a specific state-approved curriculum, nor to speak on behalf of a cause.

It doesn't? Really? Hmmmm....

Originally Posted by Silifi

And I'll also offer you that this applies just as much to the other side. But, that side is much bigger and their funding source doesn't appear to have a particular motivation for wanting people to believe in climate change.

And again, really?

Originally Posted by Copperfield

It doesn't? Really? Hmmmm....

Although I will admit that most professors fit into the "mainstream" and are therefore fairly system supportive, I also know of professors, in the public university system, who advocate for all sorts of things that the state generally would not support. Like Marxist revolutions. I've been exposed to as many "radical" ideas in college as I have on this forum.

The college system is far too decentralized for there to be a coherent message coming out of it. There is an echo chamber effect, but I fail to see any attempt to indoctrinate, because if there is an attempt, it is a horribly failed one. I'm leaving college far less supportive of the state than I entered it.

And again, really?

What, pray tell, is the advantage to elites on selling people climate change? To jack up electricity prices after a carbon tax of some sort is instituted? They can already come up with a million excuses to do so. To regulate people's lives? To what end? Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never been able to find a motive for the "climate change hoax" that isn't incredibly convoluted, and couldn't much more easily be sold through some more simple conspiracy.

Furthermore, there is actual documentable evidence that the government discourages scientific findings in favor of climate change, and not a lot in the opposite direction. Even if we say that they are even, then why is the debate by government-funded scientists (internationally, even, so this requires a pretty gigantic conspiracy) so lopsided? And if the government is catering to the rich (and it most certainly is) then why is it influencing 90+% of scientists to publish findings that rule against some of the most powerful vested interests (the fossil fuels industry)?

Point is, the theory behind climate change is sound, there is plenty of indication that it is occurring, and the level of emissions that humanity is producing is consistent with the warming that has already occurred. You don't need to make an argument from authority to figure out that there is at least something to the idea. Unless you just want to put your hands over your ears and yell about how all the data is fabricated.

Originally Posted by Silifi

What, pray tell, is the advantage to elites on selling people climate change? To jack up electricity prices after a carbon tax of some sort is instituted? They can already come up with a million excuses to do so. To regulate people's lives? To what end? Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never been able to find a motive for the "climate change hoax" that isn't incredibly convoluted, and couldn't much more easily be sold through some more simple conspiracy.

Furthermore, there is actual documentable evidence that the government discourages scientific findings in favor of climate change, and not a lot in the opposite direction. Even if we say that they are even, then why is the debate by government-funded scientists (internationally, even, so this requires a pretty gigantic conspiracy) so lopsided? And if the government is catering to the rich (and it most certainly is) then why is it influencing 90+% of scientists to publish findings that rule against some of the most powerful vested interests (the fossil fuels industry)?

Point is, the theory behind climate change is sound, there is plenty of indication that it is occurring, and the level of emissions that humanity is producing is consistent with the warming that has already occurred. You don't need to make an argument from authority to figure out that there is at least something to the idea. Unless you just want to put your hands over your ears and yell about how all the data is fabricated.

Oh I made no editorialization about global warming. I believe I have made my views on climate change abundantly clear. If it is a problem, then I consider it a self-correcting one. That is, if too many people are causing too much change to the climate, then the resultant die-off will solve the problem better than any government official or scientist ever could. Nature doesn't really care what the temperature in you neighborhood is or if you are personally inconvenienced by it.

I was only pointing out that your belief that there is no material gain for those proposing so called "green technology" (which isn't really "green" most of the time) is really naive. Just ask Al Gore.

Originally Posted by Copperfield

Oh I made no editorialization about global warming. I believe I have made my views on climate change abundantly clear. If it is a problem, then I consider it a self-correcting one. That is, if too many people are causing too much change to the climate, then the resultant die-off will solve the problem better than any government official or scientist ever could. Nature doesn't really care what the temperature in you neighborhood is or if you are personally inconvenienced by it.

I was only pointing out that your belief that there is no material gain for those proposing so called "green technology" (which isn't really "green" most of the time) is really naive. Just ask Al Gore.

Is that really your idea of a good plan, or are you just being snarky? If you're serious, it stands as one of the most anti-social comments we've collected here in our 10+ years. Just saying.

Originally Posted by Silifi

Although I will admit that most professors fit into the "mainstream" and are therefore fairly system supportive, I also know of professors, in the public university system, who advocate for all sorts of things that the state generally would not support. Like Marxist revolutions. I've been exposed to as many "radical" ideas in college as I have on this forum.

Probably because the Marxists created much of the political rhetoric, and even conservatives have adopted the lexicon if not the agenda. Marxists introduced such a term as proletariat and its derivations, as well as the concept that the working class has a legitimate role in history. It is perhaps possible, though, that people exposed to Marxism in the relatively-safe Ivory Tower will cause people to cavil at the faults of Marxist systems in practice. Better at the Ivory Tower than in some camp of revolutionaries set on overthrowing the capitalist order.

The college system is far too decentralized for there to be a coherent message coming out of it. There is an echo chamber effect, but I fail to see any attempt to indoctrinate, because if there is an attempt, it is a horribly failed one. I'm leaving college far less supportive of the state than I entered it.

The secular colleges have abandoned all pretense of imposing any moral standards or cultural norms. People who enter college as power-hungry narcissists will graduate as such. There just isn't enough prosperity in America to serve all the power-hungry narcissists who graduate from MBA programs in the style that such people expect. Some are broken in their experiences in private industry. Some succeed and get to live like pharaohs.

What, pray tell, is the advantage to elites on selling people climate change? To jack up electricity prices after a carbon tax of some sort is instituted? They can already come up with a million excuses to do so. To regulate people's lives? To what end? Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never been able to find a motive for the "climate change hoax" that isn't incredibly convoluted, and couldn't much more easily be sold through some more simple conspiracy.

Getting a government elected that will authorize Big Business to act as profiteering monopolists exempt from any constraint other than the ruin of the overall market is far more effective in creating maximal profits than is any 'hoax' about climate change. The Hard Right seems to believe that acceleration of the consumption of natural resources will itself create prosperity in itself. (Paradoxically, such was one of the faults of "Socialist" economic practice in the Soviet Union, something that somehow evades whatever consciousness our corporate elites have).

Furthermore, there is actual documentable evidence that the government discourages scientific findings in favor of climate change, and not a lot in the opposite direction. Even if we say that they are even, then why is the debate by government-funded scientists (internationally, even, so this requires a pretty gigantic conspiracy) so lopsided? And if the government is catering to the rich (and it most certainly is) then why is it influencing 90+% of scientists to publish findings that rule against some of the most powerful vested interests (the fossil fuels industry)?

Definitely true with Dubya, and definitely true with the GOP majority in the House, and of course GOP front groups like the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity.

Point is, the theory behind climate change is sound, there is plenty of indication that it is occurring, and the level of emissions that humanity is producing is consistent with the warming that has already occurred. You don't need to make an argument from authority to figure out that there is at least something to the idea. Unless you just want to put your hands over your ears and yell about how all the data is fabricated.

The connection between carbon dioxide levels and glaciation is well established in the scientific studies of the Pleistocene Epoch. But what happens when all the fossil fuels are burned up? Back come the glaciers that destroy most large cities north of the terminal moraines of 18,000 years ago (in places like Seattle, St. Louis, Louisville, New York, London, Berlin, Warsaw,and Moscow) with places just to their south (like what are now Paris, Munich, Prague, Kiev, Boise, Denver, Memphis, and Baltimore) becoming uninhabitable polar deserts and with deserts like the Sahara, Kalahari, and the Gobi extending into places where they now seem improbable (the Congo? Korea? Yes.)

At some time this 4T will force Americans to look at a longer time frame, and the only question is at what stage of the 4T. It's not so long ago that the most disparaging thing that anyone could say of an investment is that it is "long term". Maybe more of us need to think of what the world will be like 40 years from now than whether the figures for the next quarterly report will look good. Boomers may have little stake in what the world will be like in 40 years, but the Millennial Generation does. Such can make all the difference in the world.

Originally Posted by Odin

LOL, your nephew and I are sounding like carbon copies!

That's very cool, Odin. I'm very proud of him!

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Probably because the Marxists created much of the political rhetoric, and even conservatives have adopted the lexicon if not the agenda. Marxists introduced such a term as proletariat and its derivations, as well as the concept that the working class has a legitimate role in history.

Not to mention that Marxists have influenced how we view history. IIRC it was Brecht who introduced the idea that history was a long series of little individual choices and if people would choose to do the "right" things...

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Is that really your idea of a good plan, or are you just being snarky? If you're serious, it stands as one of the most anti-social comments we've collected here in our 10+ years. Just saying.

Copperfield is a self-professed nihilist. I read all of his posts through that lens.

Ugh, I hate nihilistic types. It's probably why stereotypical Xer attitudes piss me off so much.

Originally Posted by Copperfield

I was only pointing out that your belief that there is no material gain for those proposing so called "green technology" (which isn't really "green" most of the time) is really naive. Just ask Al Gore.

I didn't say no material gain, I said that the primary funding source (the governments of developed countries, namely) don't have a vested interest in it. Sure, you can create "green technology," but this is hardly an established, moneyed interest group that can be claimed to dominate the government's funding and direct it towards purposes of rigging the science.

Scientists would seem to be better suited by playing up potential consequences of climate change and then returning inconclusive results in order to continue drawing funding to do the same research over and over again.

Good chart on energy use and waste:

http://www.grist.org/i/assets/llnl-energy-flow-2009.jpg

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Is that really your idea of a good plan, or are you just being snarky? If you're serious, it stands as one of the most anti-social comments we've collected here in our 10+ years. Just saying.

Mr. Copperfield excels in those kinds of statements.

Originally Posted by Chas'88

Not to mention that Marxists have influenced how we view history. IIRC it was Brecht who introduced the idea that history was a long series of little individual choices and if people would choose to do the "right" things...

~Chas'88

I might dissent with Bertholt Brecht on his politics, but he was one of the finest playwrights of the 20th century. One can see his works without becoming a Marxist. An attempt to remove Marxism from Brecht is like denying the Christian values of Shakespeare.

I can hardly think of any country in greater need of attention to Bertholt Brecht these days than... it's the most populous country in the Western Hemisphere.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Good chart on energy use and waste:

Do you remember the steam radiators in buildings of a certain age? Steam heat was a relatively-cheap way of heating buildings. You didn't want to touch the radiator, and it was ugly, but it was a heck of a lot cheaper than using electricity or burning natural gas to heat a building. The University of California at Berkeley relied almost entirely upon steam heat for buildings on its campus, and got away with it. Sure, the area has a mild climate, but it can be chilly at any time.

Power companies used to transmit pressurized steam to houses and businesses. Maybe that was when the power generation was less centralized than it now is. Today much of the steam from giant coal-burning and petroleum-burning power plants simply goes into the atmosphere as waste heat. Too bad!

Russia does hot-water radiator heating. Same sort of thing, though -- it's a semi-byproduct of their power generation. The radiators you can get for it are light-years beyond the kinds of stuff you're thinking of, and they're all either sufficiently low temperature or come with cages around them so that burning isn't any kind of real risk. And the ones they have today are reasonably stylish and unobtrusive. Here's one pretty inexpensive model. What's more, there are all other manner of heating options, if we're talking about forced-fluid. The best one, efficiency-wise, is underfloor systems.

What's really neat about heated-water systems is the fact that they are one of the few things that can make meaningful and effective use of home-scale windpower. What we did (having no hookups to central water in our village meant we were on our own to heat what we pumped out of our well, we took the advice of our neighbors, and pretty much local common knowledge) is run the wires off our wind turbine right into a teapot-heater-type coil stuck inline in our boiler right prior to the thermostat. No need for voltage inverters, batteries, etc, etc -- when the wind blows, power heats the element, which heats the water. Wind power is 'dirty' in the sense that it fluctuates all over the place in terms of volts, amps, and most important, hertz; you can't plug it into any kind of gridded power without a fair bit of ancillary hardware to clean the power up to the usable 220V/50Hz (or whatever in the States). But resistance heating coils don't care a damn about voltage or frequency -- they'll take anything.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I might dissent with Bertholt Brecht on his politics, but he was one of the finest playwrights of the 20th century. One can see his works without becoming a Marxist. An attempt to remove Marxism from Brecht is like denying the Christian values of Shakespeare.

I can hardly think of any country in greater need of attention to Bertholt Brecht these days than... it's the most populous country in the Western Hemisphere.

There hasn't been anyone who's more defined what modern theatre and the relationship it should have with its audience. Everyone since Brecht has in some way used his techniques and audience-performance relations. His theory of "Epic Theatre" still reverberates today accross all of Western Civilization. In fact I think that what the theatre needs is a new visionary to come along and redefine its rules just like Brecht did.

Alfred Jarry is one of the founding fathers of Advant-Guard Theatre.
Brecht is the man who made Advant-Guard Theatre what it is today.

Similarlly...

Henrik Ibsen is one of the founding fathers of Realism (along with Shaw & Strindberg).
Anton Chekhov is the man who made Realism what it is today.

Oh and millieX, Brecht's main points against Realism in theatre was that Film did it better.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Mr. Copperfield excels in those kinds of statements.

Indeed I do, having worked very hard over the years to develop the talent. Alas in this case, I am being completely serious.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

Copperfield is a self-professed nihilist. I read all of his posts through that lens.

Don't forget misanthrope.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Is that really your idea of a good plan, or are you just being snarky? If you're serious, it stands as one of the most anti-social comments we've collected here in our 10+ years. Just saying.

Why wouldn't it be? Do you really think reality will prove to be otherwise? What example in the short span of human history leads you to believe that mankind will unite, sing kumbaya, give up all of their pretty lights and baubles, stop reproducing and start sharing? Hell, if being a skeptic on that one makes me "anti-social" then I guess I had better get started on that "suckers only" tree fort. I think you are going to need the space more than I will.

Shit, most of you are still playing the game, rooting for your team, cheering when they score, reveling in your pathetic political group identity. These are not the actions of people ready to evolve. Just a couple of packs of semi-conscious neo-monkeys following a few alphas around. I haven't seen a single one of you attempt to address the actual problem. I haven't even seen it mentioned. Until you are willing to address that, any C average high school biology student can tell you what the end-result will be.

Allow me to be the bearer of bad news. You aren't special, you don't live in special times, and you certainly have yet to come close to conquering nature. I don't say that to be insulting regardless of what you may think. I say it because it's the truth. Nature isn't impressed by buildings or poems or sonnets. Not by music, cars, computers, the internet, pollution, clean air, clean laundry, your sex life, your ability to be a good parent, Lindsey Lohan, the royal family, global warming, global cooling or who is going to win the next election. One is just as insignificant as the next and that is something that science has proved quite true. We live and die here at the mercy of nature and the universe and you should learn to be fucking happy with that. Be happy floating on that breeze because if you ain't.... Well you are going to see some pretty heavy shit over the next century.

Originally Posted by Odin

Ugh, I hate nihilistic types. It's probably why stereotypical Xer attitudes piss me off so much.

Not to derail the thread with a tangent but, saying you "hate nihilistic types" is easy. I want you to dig deeper than that. Why do you hate them Odin? Why does it upset you?