Does Chinese Civilization Come from Ancient Egypt? - <AUTHOR> http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/02/did-chinese-civilization-come-from-ancient-egypt-archeological-debate-at-heart-of-china-national-identity/ <comment><USER2> Remarkable how rapidly politics comes into the discussion of Chinese history. Putting that aside, the theory is interesting and plausible for a few reasons, yet probably wrong. I like it because of the weird connections, like the ancient ores and the "nine rivers". This is numerology, not science: searching for support rather than nullification.

The theory is IMO wrong for a much simpler reason. It assumes (as many theories of history do) that the vastness of our planet means that we used to live in disconnected communities, islands of humanity spread out and yet not talking to each other.

You can walk around the globe in 10-20 years. It is unimaginable that trade routes such as the Silk Road did not carry knowledge such as how to smelt bronze, like those African ores, and any other precious good. Wherever there were people, they were innovating and trading goods and knowledge with their neighbors. Only exceptionally were pockets of humanity actually isolated.

You don't need an emperor and his navy to carry knowledge halfway across the globe. One or two people, on foot, will do it, and did it, and so, this nullifies the theory that Chinese civilization somehow sprang from Egyptian civilization. The two co-developed together with the entire connected world at the time.

<comment><USER3> > You can walk around the globe in 10-20 years.

This is an important footnote that many historians seem to overlook.

However a similar argument makes the seaborne theory plausible too, as it took less than three years to sail or row around the globe, probably ever since the invention of the sailboat (~4000BC?).

<comment><USER2> Yes, navigable water has always been the crucible of trade. Hence the economy and culture of the Mediterranean even from the early bronze age. And coastal trade is compelling, you don't need sea-faring ships, just dinghies capable of sailing to the next beach. So we can, reasonably, argue that there was a global human economy and civilisation (albeit one that operated really slowly) as early as 5,000 BCE (date that Wikipedia quotes for earliest depiction of a sailboat).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since the article doesn't have too much information this seems as just as based on anecdotal evidence as the "theory" that Japanese culture and specifically Shinto has evolved from biblical Hebrews/Israelites: [http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~remnant/isracame.htm](http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~remnant/isracame.htm)

<comment><USER5> That nutjob has been trying to peddle his Nanking Massacre denial bullshit on Wikipedia for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is false. The Chinese writing system and Mythos have no connection at all with Egypt. Descriptions of rivers predominate in ancient myths and there is no reason to construct a hypothesis that has little explanatory power and even less plausibility.

<comment><USER7> I am not at all a linguist and not at all an expert on either writing system, but as a layman looking at both the Chinese and Ancient Egyptian writing systems, one similarity seemed really striking - the notion that a typical word is composed of a 2 parts - a semantic, pictographic "root", combined with another part that indicates pronunciation.

<comment><USER8> It's not uncommon but not typical either in Chinese. My impression is that those kinds of characters were easier to form through improvisation, and became standardized without actually fitting usual norms of character creation. Slang, regional synonyms, loanwords, and the like would be likely candidates for this process.

<comment><USER9> It is typical -- now. (Wikipedia provides an estimate of "over 90% of all characters".) Chinese linguistics traditionally distinguishes six different classes of character[1], of which one is the semantophore-phonophore pair. That class is the most numerous now, because most new characters have always gone into it, because it's easy to devise new characters in that system. (It's even easier to "devise" characters in the fourth class, but those characters are by definition not new; see below.)

But when the writing system was new, other classes were a lot more common than they are now.

[1] The categories, and examples of each, as listed in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification) :

\- Direct pictorial representation of a physical object, as 水 is just a picture of water, or 马 is just a picture of a horse. (Both are ridiculous now, but recognizable in their original forms.)

\- "Pictorial" representation of an abstract idea, as 上 depicts "up", 下 depicts "down", and 三 depicts "three". (These still work!)

\- Semantic compounds, formed from several more basic characters all of which are used for the meaning. Apparently the subject of much debate, but examples in the spirit of the category are 森 "forest" = 木 tree + tree + tree; 好 "good" = 女 woman + 子 child; 尖 "sharp" depicting something which is 小 (small) at one end and 大 (big) at the other; 歪 "crooked" = 不 not + 正 straight; etc.

\- "Loans", characters which are used solely for their phonetic content. For example, the character 英 which means "Eng"land is identical with the character 英, pronounced ying but meaning "hero". A lot of characters which were originally loans like this have subsequently developed distinctions, as 来 and 麦 have.

\- Phono-semantic compounds. The topic of discussion here. As 切 qie "cut" sounds similar to 七 qi "seven", but means similarly to 刀 dao "knife", or 到 dao "to" sounds similar to 刀 dao "knife", but means similarly to 至 zhi "to", or 打 da "strike" sounds similar to 丁 ding "fourth in a sequence", but means similarly to 手 shou "hand".

\- A mystery category, involving pairs of related characters, that we no longer understand. Example: 考 / 老.

This pretty well covers all the logical possibilities: direct representations, compounds involving only meaning, characters used only for sound (a compound would be superfluous there), and compounds involving meaning and sound together.

<comment><USER10> 木does not mean tree. It means wood. Tree is 树.

<comment><USER9> So what? 木 means wood _now_. (Well, no it doesn't. 木头 means wood now. 木 is not a word in modern Chinese.) It _meant_ tree, which is relevant to the construction of 森, 本, 休, 树, etc.

It took me all of a few seconds to look up the proverb 独木不成林 "one tree alone is not a forest". What do you think the 木 means there?

<comment><USER11> > 木 is not a word in modern Chinese

Eh, 木 is used commonly by itself.

这张椅子是用木做的。 (This chair is made of wood)

<comment><USER9> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure most people have thought this through since the time they may have been lied to in elementary school, but rivers flow don't flow south, they flow downhill... and there are plenty that flow north.

<comment><USER4> What school do they teach that at? If we take the 2 most famous rivers then the Nile flows from south to north pretty much straight, and the Amazon flows from west to east by north east. It might have been a long time since I was in elementary school but I never heard of "rivers flowing south", could be a US thing since most of the large rivers in the US do flow southish.

<comment><USER12> I have no idea where I heard that fact - only remember "trivia" from friends in elementary school telling me that the Nile is the only river that flows north, daddy-longlegs are the most poisonous spiders but their mouths are too small to bite humans, etc.

I'm not sure if the anecdote in the beginning is a true one but it says it takes place in Hefei, so I'm not sure it's a particularly American piece of misinformation.

<comment><USER4> Don't know never heard that fact, especially considering that rivers that flow north in Europe are quite common since the norther part of Europe is still rebounding from the last large ice age and it's overall at a lower elevation than southern Europe where you also get the large mountain ranges.

So famous rivers like the Sine, Elbe, Oder etc. all flow "north".

<comment><USER13> Vistula too. It might actually be harder to find major rivers that flow "south".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any theory that uses the Hyksos (Sea Peoples) as an explanation is usually wrong. Crackpots use them because so little is known about who they were, and where they came from, hence any wild claims are harder to disprove.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Hyksos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Hyksos)

For a good up-to-date erudite but readable account, see _' 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed'_ by Eric Cline.

[prologue] [http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/p10185.pdf](http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/p10185.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is when my mind links a particlar myth of both cultures and more about a fish man showing up and teaching people the ways of civilization. As I remember it was Mesopotamia, China, and the Indus valley, and maybe a few more?

I think its plausible that civilization itself spread via sea faring peoples, so perhaps it was some hyksos like people that brought not their genetics, but knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER16> Religions are ~2000 years old;

Humans are ~200,000 years old;

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_ancient_history)

Religion was born when first con-man met the first fool;

"Earth is flat" \--Religion

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth)

</comment><comment><USER17> For ForeignPolicy to pick this up, it would be something with potential to cause trouble inside China.

The simplest explanation is that trade existed even in prehistoric times. It did not have to be the same person that took ore from African mines all the way to China. While merchants traveled a lot, those in high ranks did not have a reason to travel much.

This story appears to be on par with Jesus Christ being from India.

</comment><comment><USER18> Vistula is flowing north. Not as major as Nile, but why does it have to be? It is still huge. The theory is inspiring, but doesnt seem probable.

</comment><comment><USER19> Betteridge's Law.

<comment><USER20> There must be a corollary law, that states: "Any comment that quotes Betteridge's Law will have a large number of down-votes."

<comment><USER21> "Comments that quote Betteridge's Law get the most upvotes?"

Would be an appropriate headline

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _Sun's thesis proved_ controversial when ...

Way to be impartial, headlines.</comment>


Super Mario 64 Online - <AUTHOR> https://sm64o.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Released today, see demo video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS3CrLG8dEg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS3CrLG8dEg)

I'm not affiliated with the project, just found out about it via twitter.</comment>


The History of New York's 'Hotel for Autos' - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/09/the-marvellous-history-of-new-yorks-hotel-for-autos/405832/ <comment><USER2> That's the history of automated parking - too many one-off systems. There are lots of different systems, but nobody has hundreds of installations with standard parts.</comment>


The Sunset of C and C++ - <AUTHOR> http://blog.biicode.com/c-cpp-biggest-threats-modern-ecosystem/

<comment><USER2> I think the point here is that depending on Boost (Or similar libraries) should not be a problem.

Consider python's pip. Bootstrapping a python codebase is simple, just run pip install -r requirements_file.txt. The bootstrapping itself may take some time, but it's automatic and simple to do.

We need exactly the same for C and C++. Bootstrapping huge C/C++ libs will never be done in a couple of minutes, compiling those take time. But the process of triggering that bootstrap can (and should) be simple and natural (I think we achieved that with boost on biicode. Of course everything can be improved). That's what a C/C++ dependency manager means. Forget to elide large compile times, that's a matter of how the language works. But let's try to make gluing C/C++ libraries together an easy to "call" task.

<comment><USER3> I partly disagree. Depending on boost, as-is, is still a problem from the point of view of engineering, and the example in the post is relevant. It shouldnt be necessary to retrieve hundreds of megabytes for implementing some serial-port functionality. The problem, of course it is not boost fault, or boost developers. Boost is fantastic. The problem is that is has been developed without environment tools like cargo, pip, maven, or whatever. If we had something similar for C and/or C++ before boost was developed, I'd bet we had a SerialPort lib, independent, portable, efficient, focused and well tested, and BoostAsio would just depend on it, instead of developing inside that logic.

Totally agree about that we need something as pip for C and C++, I think it is the point of the post.

<comment><USER4> > If we had something similar for C and/or C++ before boost was developed, I'd > bet we had a SerialPort lib, independent, portable, efficient, focused and > well tested, and BoostAsio would just depend on it, instead of developing > inside that logic.

That's backwards. A SerialPort library would depend on Asio since it defines sync and async streams and the utilities built around that. It seems bad design for a SerialPort library to reimplement those basic utilities.

A dependency manager allows for finer modularity. So instead, Asio could be split into multiple libraries: Asio.Core, Asio.Serial, Asio.Network, etc. Its ok we have to bring in two smaller libraries instead of one large libary, since we have a dependency manager to handle this for us.

Also, a lack of a dependency manager in C++ has lead to developing of large monolithic libraries. So instead of managing dependencies, the library gives you everything plus the kitchen sink, so the user won't need to use another library. Of course, this is not scalable.

The other side-effect from a lack of a dependency manager in C++ is the developing of unnecessary header-only libraries(like Boost.Signals2). This just slows down compilation.

A real viable dependency manager in C++ will be a game changer, and recently. there is a lots of serious talk about it. In fact, there are like 3 difference talks that are directly related to dependency managing at C++Now 2015.

<comment><USER3> > That's backwards. A SerialPort library would depend on Asio since it defines > sync and async streams and the utilities built around that. It seems bad > design for a SerialPort library to reimplement those basic utilities.

IMO, the first layer could be a proper abstraction of the basic OS serial port functionality, without any notion of sync/async issues. Well, it will typically be sync. Keep it simple, it could be maybe just 2-6 files, depending on the approach to tackle different OSs. A common interface for open, config (baud, and the like), send, receive bytes, close. Lets call it SerialPortHW

Then, sync and async streams can be defined, or at least their interfaces and common functionality, which would be independent on any notion of physical transportation as SerialPortHW. Les call it AsyncStreams. In no way SerialPortHW has to depend on AsyncStreams (SerialPortHW->AsyncStreams), and the opposite is the same. They do not read logical, the concept "SerialPortHW" does not have implicit a requirement to know anything about async issues. If a function is slow to send bytes over the wire, it is slow, so what. It is fully functional, well defined, stand-alone and independent functionality that deserves its own entity.

Then, if the async serial port funcionality is desired, another component, lets call it AsyncSerialPort can be built composing/deriving AsyncStreams and SerialPortHW.

Sorry for the long response, I love arguing about SW design :)

<comment><USER4> Well since Asio is generic there is no coupling between the interface and implementation. However, from a user perspective, they will most likely use both(even its just for sync reading), since Asio provides other utilities such as buffered reading and reading until a certain character is found.

<comment><USER3> The likelyhood of using both is not enough reason to embed them in the same SW component.

Concerns have to be decoupled as mush as possible. It is even more likely that the user will use some serialization, and there is no point at all to implement serialization inside the library! Because then, also it is likely that the user want to make some CRCs to check message integrity, or cypher de message so lets embed such funcionality in the library too :)

I have developed and used code many times using a serial port (robotics, industry), and in many occasions such extra async framework or the streams are not used. I know they are quite convenient and useful for many many cases, but it is still a separate concern than implementing the low level "hardware" comunication, and thus deserve decoupling it its own component, exactly the same as serialization. In that way, when using Async for network sockets, the SerialPortHW concept wouldnt be involved at all, it would be in a different concept not included in the current project.

<comment><USER4> > It is even more likely that the user will use some serialization

Serialization is beyond the scope of what I am talking about. I am talking about reading bytes from a serial port.

> In that way, when using Async for network sockets, the SerialPortHW concept > wouldnt be involved at all

But that is my whole point about Asio being split into smaller libraries such as Asio.Core, Asio.Network, and Asio.SerialPort. So you can use Asio.SerialPort without needing Asio.Network.

> in many occasions such extra async framework or the streams are not used.

You didn't read and write bytes to the serial port? What did you use it for?

> it would be in a different concept not included in the current project.

Its important for the library to implement the same "concepts"(or type requirements) for better consistency and composability(the only exception is iostreams which is horrible for both usability and implementations).

<comment><USER3> > But that is my whole point about Asio being split into smaller libraries > such as Asio.Core, Asio.Network, and Asio.SerialPort. So you can use > Asio.SerialPort without needing Asio.Network

Yes, totally agree about it. And I think I see your point now, agree also that libraries must implement concepts in a consistent way, and streams are indeed the way to go for reading/writing bytes. Maybe, what I am uncorfortable about is having that Asio.SerialPort explicitely coupled with async stuff like promises/futures.

Put it other way round, I think maybe the Asio.SerialPort should actually be something like HW.SerialPort, and this define a very low level library that acts just as an API to the HW, thus no promises here, as the OS does not handle that. Other languages like Node, Python could actually use and wrap this library to access the HW, and built their own async features. Then, it is perfect to have an Asio.SerialPort that builts both sync and async streams, using in the low level the HW.SerialPort. Maybe something in the line of: [https://github.com/wjwwood/serial](https://github.com/wjwwood/serial), but maybe with a more C++ style std::strings, streams (sync). Not sure, anyway, I will review my ideas, maybe I have to review my concepts about async and in which part of the stack should they be implemented, lets think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> BTW, Asio can be used without needing boost. In fact, the non-boost version is the actual maintained version. A script is applied to boostify it. It would be nice if Asio could be added to biicode.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some of the worries the author puts forward are warranted. Here's something that might help: [http://ccodearchive.net/](http://ccodearchive.net/)

<comment><USER3> Interesting project, yes, I also like the idea of having a common consensus for generating config.h files. Any idea why it is just C? Cause extending it to C++ seems trivial, and cannot find the rational about this.

IMHO, most dev tools have practically no real need to distinguish between C and C++

<comment><USER5> >Any idea why it is just C?

I'm not exactly sure, but I believe it's mostly due to the author's[1] background.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_Russell)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft might be cooking some Midori into C# 7 as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting</comment>


Words are losing their power. Not even Jason Bourne can save them now - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/21/words-jason-bourne-matt-damon-film-hollywood-dialogue <comment><USER3> With the exception of Star Wars: The Force Awaken, I haven't seen any of the blockbusters mentioned, though I wonder how much this article cherry-picks, given that the 2 top grossing movies this year (Civil War, Zootopia) [0] seem dialogue-dense based on their trailers despite being summer entertainment. Also, I would have attributed the disappearing of dialogue to our increasingly dumbed-down short attention spans, something that has been evident in Jerry Bruckheimer films. Also, Avatar, which had such shit dialogue that I found it hard to believe until I looked it up that James Cameron had written the screenplay for his Aliens, which has timeless (if brief) dialogue.

That said, it's completely believable to me that the cost of making universally clever dialogue is much harder than just doing it in one language, and will be the easiest line-item to justify cutting with international audiences being increasingly prized. I've always been OK with reading subtitles but it wasn't until Inglourious Basterds did I realize how jarring and unusual it is to have foreign languages hold equal screentime to your own native language (which makes me respect IB even more for its artistic achievement).

It'll definitely be a shame if plots themselves become increasingly dumbed down for international reasons. One thing the OP didn't mention in terms of the Chinese-market effect on Americans is the seemingly higher frequency of Chinese locales making cameos...though this is something I welcome, as the Chinese-based set pieces in movies such as Skyfall as Pacific Rim have usually been spectacular.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if there's somewhere that lists line counts in films so we can compare? I've seen both Zootopia and Civil War and they both felt dialogue- dense (and good!).

<comment><USER5> An analysis of word/n-grams/length in English subtitles vs movie run times would suffice, and I believe both are available, but probably not in a well structured format.

Flesh-Kincaid vs year of release in those subtitles would also be interesting...

/just planting seeds of ideas or there in hacker space because I'm too lazy to do it right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find that with the quantity of dialogue, I tend to observe the opposite trend in a lot of story-driven videogames: many lines will be devoted to elaborating on needless backstory, reducing characters down to walking encyclopedias. Many of these games have a hard time taking advantage of their medium as far as their story goes.

Her touching on the loss of _quality_ in dialogue, not just _quantity,_ seems like the more important problem. To me, _meaningful_ and _good_ dialogue is important - whereas dialogue for the sake of dialogue tends to suck. I'm not saying that everything that comes out of a character's lips needs to be important plot points, but writers and producers should think more about what they're trying to accomplish in their work when a character needs to say something. I think a piece of bad dialogue hurts more than if that character were to say nothing.

<comment><USER7> Game dialogue definitely has an weak point in defaulting to an expository mode, and when this happens it's usually in tandem with a lot of other kitchen-sink elements that are "immersive" or "world-building" but don't respect the player's time or attention. Games that gun for interactive story remain in a perpetual struggle for maximizing the agency of both players and authors, and the compromise is frequently to distort the timeline and social situation as needed, on command, so that instead of cutting down on quantity, players can sample the experience à la carte and then cut short or resume any scenario when they're bored. But it's still a problem if you're like me and feel obligated to view all the content no matter what. There are known patterns now, but it's still a work-in-progress field.

Movies, on the other hand, have a definite limit to how much they can cram in, and so they're more inclined to use time efficiently. As in games, dialogue is extremely convenient as a way to do exposition, but the medium holds many other possibilities. Since there isn't conflict over agency, it's easier to make more elements in a film "inevitable" by design. For a game to present many of the set-pieces shown in movies, it has to carefully coax the player to move in the right direction and look in the right place at the right time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dialogue in Jason Bourne movies has always been low. But in this movie, it's approaching zero. The new Star Trek movie, "Fast and Furious in Spaaaace!", is not exactly dialog heavy. That's new for that franchise. But there are other movies.

There's a new Harry Potter book out today. Kids were lining up at Barnes and Noble for it last evening. Words are doing just fine.

<comment><USER9> The dialog in the new st movie is exceptional bad. Particularly Kirk calling for the execution of the bad guy completely jarring and pretty much turning me off to the movie franchise from here on out.

<comment><USER10> They seem okay as brain-dead action flicks, but they're star trek in costume only. I would to see a star trek movie in the style of a star trek TV episode, with suspense and strange phenomena and whatnot...

<comment><USER11> Thank JJ Abrams for screwing things up for everyone and keeping to do it. The last three Star Trek movies are Star Trek only in name, they're cheap action flicks and go completely against the spirit of the whole franchise.

<comment><USER12> I'm similarly disappointed in those films, but I'm holding out hope for Discovery, [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery) .

Looks to be mostly online and set in the original timeline. Bryan Fuller is involved, he wrote for Voyager and has a history of dialog heavy shows after that (pushing daisies is so underrated by the way).

<comment><USER11> We'll see. I'll hold out hope too, both for the series and for CBS not to kill it if it turns out to be good (like they did to Person of Interest).

> _pushing daisies_

Yeah, I've seen some of it; it's quite ok :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it funny that she mentions Gravity as an example of a film with little dialogue. My biggest complaint about the movie was that it had entirely _too much_ dialogue. So much pointless, clichéd exposition about the characters, as if Bullock's needed any kind of emotional background. It really ruined the movie IMO.

</comment><comment><USER14> On the flipside, Bojack Horseman, an animation on Netflix just did an episode in season 3 which is deliberately dialogue free for the majority of the episode, and it comes across as a brave and interesting move. This runs counter to the rest of the show's run which is quite dense and dialogue driven.

I can't say I've ever seen an episode of animated television like it in recent times.

<comment><USER15> > and it comes across as a brave and interesting move

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush_(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush_\(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer\))

<comment><USER16> Gentlemen status: _Creepy As Fuck_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://xkcd.com/311/](https://xkcd.com/311/)

More budget = more action scenes = less dialogue

In the far future, special effects alone might not suffice to sell films, but for now it's enough.

The other trend to consider is films lengthening; there are multi-part series and also the Netflix streaming model. A 6-hour film can maintain the same (high) action-to-dialogue ratio but still have room for a plot.

<comment><USER18> The older I get, the more action sequences and special effects bore me. But dialog and situation driven plots, like Primer and House of Cards, are very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't care about the quantity of dialog, only quality. The article doesn't even attempt to present any evidence that quality is down, aside from a rather silly poll about iconic film lines.

I'd like to see some historical comparisons, too. We tend to imagine movies as containing more than they do. 43 lines doesn't strike me as particularly small. It's one more line than I count for Darth Vader in Star Wa^H^H^H^H^H^H^HA New Hope, for example.

<comment><USER20> Vader's lines were proportional to his screen time though. If Luke was mute the movie would have sucked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Some hand-picked blockbuster movies having less dialogue demonstrates the decline of language?

What does short, fluffy blog posts with titles unsupported by their brief content demonstrate?

Even if movies did represent trends in common language usage, which I doubt, using fewer words could represent the opposite of the title's conclusion -- it could be that words are becoming more efficient, and thus more powerful, over time.

Anyway, some people actually studying common vocabulary usage patterns seem to come to the opposite conclusion, when they use data and not their favorite movies. [https://bostonreview.net/blog/claude-s-fischer-how-gss- got-i...](https://bostonreview.net/blog/claude-s-fischer-how-gss-got-it-wrong)

</comment><comment><USER22> The international marketing considerations are interesting. But the assertions about The Kids These Days are baseless. Instagram and Snapchat are mostly visual forms of communication, sure, but meanwhile, texting is as popular as ever, the fan fiction community provides a huge dynamic workshop where aspiring writers hone their craft and avid readers learn all about tropes and are encouraged to critically analyze what they're reading, and when teenagers get together in real life, they talk just as much as they ever did. Recent trends in language change are being driven by this new generation, and it's exciting to watch it happen. The Kids These Days are alright.

<comment><USER23> XKCD did it also. [https://xkcd.com/1414/](https://xkcd.com/1414/)

The generation that grew up with the internet is not gonna be bad at writing. Videos are great, but text still rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think this might just come down to a difference in directors. A few years ago, when Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon were making blockbusters, no-one would have complained about the lack of dialogue.

Certainly I can remember lines from Whedon's Avengers film, such as:

"Puny God"

and

"That's my secret, Cap. I'm always angry."

and of course:

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

More here: [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(2012_film)](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Avengers_\(2012_film\))

</comment><comment><USER25> Mad Max is a bad example. Max never spoke much after his family died in the first film.

<comment><USER26> It's not the same Max in the Fury Road, so I'm not sure that applies.

<comment><USER27> Fury Road is supposed to be the same Max as the other movies, unless I misunderstand you.

<comment><USER26> The same, but not necessarily from the same timeline. It may not even be the same guy, but the same story. Or maybe not the same at all. Here's the best summary of ideas I've found:

> Tom Hardy also spoke on this issue by saying, "We have to take it > differently as George is taking it. It's a relaunch and revisit to the > world. An entire restructuring. That's not to say that it's not picking up > or leaving off from the Mad Max you know already, but it's a nice re-take on > the entire world using the same character, depositing him in the same world > but bringing him up to date by 30 years." On the other hand, Charlize Theron > also said that Hardy wasn't playing Mel Gibson's character. They just happen > to be both named Max Rockatanski. In fact, Miller stated with the 30 year > gap since the last film and a new actor playing the lead, it was just easier > to do a new version of the film without maintaining any continuity. The > easiest way Miller puts it is to think of each film as a "legend of the Road > Warrior" meaning that each film is a story about Mad Max that happened, but > perhaps told by different people and so some things are altered from each > story.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/faq](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/faq)

<comment><USER28> > each film is a story about Mad Max that happened

That is what i think of it.

I think it is also important to notice that Max is barely aprotagonist of the movie. He is more like a walking plot device. He help the drama start and move along while not being the real focus of it. Max is more of an entity than a character.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> No one likes someone talking over the fireworks on the 4th of July or narrating a rollercoaster ride, so why would people need much dialog in event films?

We go for the bigger than TV spectacle. We don't need the theater to get adult, dialog driven movies since we have great adult, dialog driven television which have the long length to give the dialog some effect. Movies are not the place to think anymore. If they can slide in great dialog than cool, but it doesn't seem to be a requirement.

Heck, I'm more mad that Honest Trailers[1], CinemaSins[2] (Everything wrong with X in Y minutes), and HISHE[3] have so much damn material because of spectacle over plot. Plots that make us wince[4] is the greater tragedy.

or... its hard for a screaming kid to screw up an action scene, but the little whippersnapper can certainly screw up a drama

1) [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL86F4D497FD3CACCE](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL86F4D497FD3CACCE)

2) [https://www.youtube.com/user/CinemaSins](https://www.youtube.com/user/CinemaSins)

3) [https://www.youtube.com/user/HISHEdotcom](https://www.youtube.com/user/HISHEdotcom)

4) [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/](https://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/)

<comment><USER20> Movies are about telling stories. It's hard to do that without dialogue or "thinking". There was a time when people were wowed solely by special effects. But CGI is so routine now long sequences of eye candy are just boring.

<comment><USER29> I don't think its hard to tell a story without much dialogue. I don't think "thinking" and "dialogue" are linked as I've seen some really un-thinking dialogue and some visual thinking without dialogue. Given the box office, I don't think CGI is boring, just poorly done CGI without a point. I think a good plot and structure is more important for movies today than just the dialogue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cherry picking BvS and Mad Max to prove a point seems like something I'd have done when I was in the 5th grade.

<comment><USER31> Agree. This article is reaching. Jeremiah Johnson, Hell in the Pacific, LeMans, etc were certainly short of dialog, but were artsy and tasteful in presentation. OTOH, "Hateful 8" includes usual Tarantino mainstay heavy dialogs that work. Wasted read, move on.

<comment><USER32> I wonder if Tarantino's films aren't just the (welcome) exception to a trend of less dialogue though.

Some quantitative analysis to back that up would be interesting; you are right that this article does seem anecdotal in evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The Guardian's take is interesting but I don't think the app economy is driving such a trend. There's been a fundamental shift in movie making in Hollywood. This was precipitated by the loss of the Blue Ray and DVD market on which they could always depend for additional revenue stream. Often times a very lucrative one for a popular movie and $40 price point. With the loss of this revenue stream Hollywood seems to be intent on movies that are as universally appealing as possible. And lack of dialogue furthers that end. It's easy to dispense with dialogue if you are filling that void with shooting, explosions, car crashing and gratuitous violence.

For a different take on lack of dialogue, a highly recommend Robert Redford in "All is Lost." A a beautiful and completely compelling movie with no dialogue, and a single actor and a single setting. Of course Hollywood didn't finance this film and it takes an extraordinary actor to pull this off.

<comment><USER34> There's also Essential Killing, another movie with barely any dialogue (maybe four sentences, and none by the protagonist, played by Vicent Gallo).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This article describes the phenomena as if something existing - <USER2> movies - is changing. However, this is not the case. Blockbuster movies of yesterday were US/Europe blockbusters; truly worldwide blockbusters are simply a new thing, not an existing one. I bet there's still a lot of big movies targeting US/Europe being shot; but movies that truly (commercially) target the entire world is a completely new thing. And I wouldn't get sad that for the time being, that thing is simplistic and bland: a new level of truly worldwide culture has to start at some common ground for everyone. It doesn't mean it will stay there.

</comment><comment><USER36> Dialogue is now a playing field of TV series. In Mad Men, for example, all they do is talk all the time. Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Girls and other similar shows are very dialogue-heavy. Add to that what most established mainstream film directors (Fincher, Soderbergh etc) say about TV series: "Feature-length films are not relevant and TV is where most of the development happens in this sector of art" (something I personally don't think is true) and you get the drift.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think the best way to understand the decline of meaning and subtlety is to see something that has it rather than try to talk about what doesn't.

I have recently realized that this is one of the things I pay attention to the most when it comes to deciding.

Two great such examples of shows with meaningful, but often terse, yet still subtle and even duplicitous would be Peaky Blinders and Marco Polo.

Here is a great example scene from Peaky Blinders:

[https://youtu.be/MzYrtG7dCg0](https://youtu.be/MzYrtG7dCg0)

</comment><comment><USER38> I wonder what those stats would look like for 1980s and 1990s action movies (e.g. anything with Schwarzenegger in it).

I severely doubt the phenomenon is new and I think it's more the author trying to make a point by cherry-picking from already rather "silent" genres than analysing a general trend.

<comment><USER32> > (e.g. anything with Schwarzenegger in it).

I can vividly imagine Hollywood directors ordering their script writers to aggressively trim _any_ dialogue spoken by a Schwarzenegger or a Stallone to one-liners and grunts after actually viewing the first couple of test shots.

<comment><USER39> And yet everyone remembers "I'll be back", or "Hasta la vista, baby!". Any memorable lines from recent movies? I can only come up with ironic memes like Bane crashing the plane with no survivors from The Dark Knight Rises.

<comment><USER34> "Why so serious?"

<comment><USER39> "It's simple, we kill the Batman".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've always considered that Christopher Nolan movies to have some fairly quotable lines.

</comment><comment><USER41> Interesting. Resembles MinSpeak in a lot of ways.

</comment><comment><USER42> "Winter is Coming"</comment>


Ask HN: Can we save net neutrality through open source licenses? - <AUTHOR> Random thought: What if we added a clause to all our open source licenses that prohibit them to be used by firm that violates net neutrality?<p>How far could Comcast or Verizon really get if they have to write their own firmware to every router and switch and server they use? <comment><USER2> It would be hard to enforce. Especially since that software is built at manufacturer level. Then a company buys it. Comcast or Verizon generally doesn't compile their own software.

BTW: Couldn't they branch the software and put it under something like an MIT license to get around this? Like what MariaDB did for MySQL.

<comment><AUTHOR> In terms of enforcement, I don't think it would be that hard. There are only a handful of ISPs. Manufacturers can either (1) build their own OS's or (2) refuse to do business with any ISP who doesn't implement net neutrality or (3) risk being sued.

Branching is possible but would be a headache for them to maintain.

I don't think this would completely stop them, but I do think it would give some of the organizations fighting for net neutrality another legal avenue to make it a headache for an ISP to go against net neutrality.

(Obviously I'm not a legal expert, just a frustrated developer who is sick of feeling powerless in this fight)</comment></comment>


Call center job interviews are run by a computer - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2012/10/21/didnt-get-the-job-a-computer-may-be-to-blame/

<comment><USER2> Back in my younger days I lived in a large city with a lot of call centers. My broke friends would get desperate for cash and need to land a job FAST. A lot of these call centers would hand out jobs to everyone who walked in the door. You would show up expecting an interview, but instead you went straight into training. So, an interview by computer is probably more of an interview than a lot of these places would give.

How picky can these places be when hiring for positions which don't even pay enough to get by? It's telling that the article mentions reliable transportation as being one of the important indicators of someone being successful at the position. For sure, these places don't pay enough for someone to afford to buy reliable transportation other than bus passes.</comment>


How to make others read my blog? - <AUTHOR>

I would like to start blogging something about programming, I want other people to read my blog and leave comment, there always comes with new ideas with this process.
I actually have a blog now hosting on github, but according to the Google Analytics there's nearly 0 visit to my site. I wonder if there's something like a tech blog pool such that I can link my blog address there and once I release a new blog, it will automatically streamed into that pool, so that other people can read my blog.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> With all respect, you don't get blog readers by beating the brush, you do it by writing articles that people find useful. And you start by learning how to write coherent English prose. Example:

"I would like to start blogging something about programming, I want other people to read my blog and leave comment, there always comes with new ideas with this process." \--> "I'm planning to start a programming blog. I hope people will find it useful and leave comments, because it's my view that such dialogues lead to personal and professional growth."

> "I actually have a blog now hosting on github, but according to the Google > Analytics there's nearly 0 visit [sic] to my site."

You're spending too much time analyzing visitor statistics and too little time analyzing your writing. A successful blog isn't its own justification -- it must contain content people find readable, useful and entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can't "make" people read your blog. They will read it if it is good.

People won't just show up to your site randomly. You need to make quality, original posts that other people will be interested. Then you can post on sites like HN, reddit, etc. If people like your content and how you write they will come back for more. If it is badly written or something that has been seen a hundred times before they will just close it.</comment>


What does P-four-nines means? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/tacertain/status/1132391299733000193 <comment><USER3> 2011 [https://techreport.com/review/21516/inside-the-second-a- new-...](https://techreport.com/review/21516/inside-the-second-a-new-look-at- game-benchmarking) article similarly started new era for computer gaming, beginning a larger, more technically informed discussion. Things got better in 2013 [https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/fcat-benchmarking- revi...](https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/fcat-benchmarking- review,1.html) and culminated with G-sync/Adaptive-Sync/FreeSync. Everybody working with hi-end hardware knew about the problem (manufacturers, hardware testers, power users, technical forums), but it was widely ignored. Things got especially weird/bad with introduction of Alternate Frame Rendering by ATI(Rage MAXX) in 1999, and Nvidia following suit in 2004 (SLI) - <USER2> benchmark results with really unpleasant hands on experience due to micro- stuttering. Took 13 years for someone to finally say it out loud [https://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/amd-frame-pacing- explore...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/amd-frame-pacing-explorer- cat138/2)

Things arent perfect even today, with some dev studios especially bad when it comes to frame pacing. XBOX is full of games released in 2019 with "locked" 30/60 fps, but jittery gameplay.</comment>


CIA watchdog 'accidentally destroyed' copy of 'torture report' - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/280002-cia-watchdog-accidentally-destroyed-only-copy-of-torture-report <comment><USER2> _Acting inspector general Christopher Sharpley uploaded the report to the office 's internal computer network and then destroyed the hard disk, apparently following standard protocol, the news outlet reported. Then, someone else in the watchdog's office reportedly misinterpreted instructions from the Justice Department not to open the file and deleted it from the server._

 _The CIA, in which the inspector general's office sits, retains a copy of the full report, and is waiting for the conclusion of a legal battle over the document._

</comment><comment><USER3> Now, this can happen to the best of us. I have a watchdog that accidentally can encrypt my whole disk. Cant be helped, one should hold a grudge about such small accidents.

</comment><comment><USER4> > a 500-page executive summary

That page count is a horror in itself.</comment>


Disruption and My Next Startup... You Help Decide - <AUTHOR> http://jasonlbaptiste.com/misc/my-next-startup/

<comment><USER3> I'm loving that woot for dating bit. I think that's a huge winner. Needs to be local though.

It would work better as a "auction" though, like you see at those charity fund-raisers. People apply to be "auctioned" off - submit detailed profiles - one girl one guy every day. People bid. Highest bid wins (make it fixed bids), depending on money raised, site sends them on a free date.

You might need to give the auctioned some influence in picking the bidder, but man what a cash cow.

<comment><USER4> I would start it in one city. Miami or SF Bay area were my first gut instinct thoughts.

The auction idea was one thought I had, but then it would be dependent upon whoever spent the most, and not the girl's tastes.

<comment><USER3> That's the thing that might kill it though.

Unless you're talking big money (which you may eventually) you're not likely to find many women/men who are attractive wanting to blind date for a free dinner or whatever.

What you could do actually, is get the person's friends to pick from the top 5, or have bidding levels that you can match to be considered "in", instead of auction style bidding.

<comment><USER4> You would definitely have to do some leg work to find women who want in. They especially may not want the attention.

That was my thought of using virtual gifts. If you send a virtual flower or teddy bear to woo the girl, it helps indicate you're serious.

I also thought about letting the girl post her top choices along the way and let the audience comment and add their thoughts in. Another option would be letting the girl pick a "wingwoman" who helps and comments on the guys who apply.

<comment><USER3> You know, you could make it a "bachelor" style date, in that you could send both guy and girl off for a weekend in Jamaica, or a week in Spain or something like that. Of course the whole thing just got a lot more expensive, but it still might fly.

You'd need to vet the contestants much more, but I'm sure that would take away the jitters some people may have in letting the highest bidder win.

EDIT: I got it. You combine the ideas: Virtual Gifts are submitted to get to a "bidding" stage. Auctioned approves profiles they would consider (They have the interest of keeping this amount high) Pre-approved people are allowed to bid. Winning bid wins. Date paid for based on amount of winning bid (the higher, the better the date, hence the reason the auctioned wants lots of bidders). So long as all the bids total more than the cost of the date, profit ensues.

<comment><USER4> exactly. The question is, how do you consistently generate enough traffic and get people bidding? Yes, it's 99 cents per bid, but if you're not interested in the girl, it doesn't matter. ie- shes too tall, it wouldn't matter if it were free. A PR burst would be nice for that week of launch, but what about the other 51 weeks in the year? If you can figure out that formula, profit ensues. Step 2: ????? actually exists here.

<comment><USER3> That's nothing to worry about. You said like woot right? Well, one pre- selected girl, one pre-selected guy per week (You can extend that to same sex matches as well, which makes for 4 contests a week, locally in X amount of cities.)

You put a detailed description of the auctioned on the site, along with the date description, and invite everyone to apply to bid. Auctioned selects those allowed to bid, I suppose you can put auto limiting options here if you want. (So far, no money). Bidding commences with a conveniently placed minimum bet (say 75% of date cost) and is not fixed - bid whatever you want. Since the bidders and auctioned are pre-selected, all we're looking to do here is get that bidding as high over the date cost (assuming only one date, perhaps if it gets really high, say 100% over the cost, the date changes, and so on and so on.) This way, you let the auctioned do your marketing for you - <USER2> interest is getting that big free night out, after all, so they keep the pool of allowed bidders large. So long as you keep the auctioned pre-selected for attractiveness/interestingness, you win. Throw a pictureless rss feed up there and don't worry, people will come back.

Hell, what the hell am I doing, I should just go build this thing!

<comment><USER4> I'd say just start with girls at first. Guys make it more complicated, and they don't have as much of a draw. I could be wrong here.

You'd have to have really in depth profiles of the girl of the week/day. Video intro, multiple pictures, in-depth Q&A, etc. If you're giving the restaurant for the date decent exposure, you may not really need to even pay for anything.

I think once you figure the traffic formula out, it's game over (in a good way). Creating attention and buzz for it will not be hard.

<comment><USER5> The thing I'm thinking about is, IF the girl is decently attractive enough to warrant such bids and attention, she should have no trouble getting dates. She might actually be wary of displaying herself on a meatmarket full of hungry males with 99 cents to lose.

I had a somewhat similar idea I fleshed out a couple of years ago that also involved local dating, but was more targeted at the 9-5 working crowd and bringing them together on an invite/want basis for quick coffee/lunch dates that brought a couple together long enough to 'get to know' but not so long that it got uncomfortable. What I couldn't figure out was how to monetize it, but your 99 cent 'participation' fee is intriguing me enough to try and resurrect it. I wouldn't mind exchanging a couple of no-strings emails with you if you'd like to discuss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Writing everything down started happening / was inspired by this long Ask HN thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475736>

TONS of good stuff in that thread. Still my favorite discussion here.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great insight into the thought processes of aspiring start-up founder with track record. Not disimilar to pg/YC's RFS.

Key context for all of us with excellent ideas going nowhere:

 _"Ideas only get you so far, and getting true feedback is a lot more valuable to me than the rare off chance of someone 'stealing' 1 of 12 ideas that I may or may not ever pursue."_

<comment><USER7> Track record?

I'm not sure that has any basis, surely Jason is a nice guy, but the only track record I am aware of is:

Some random company - Social startup which never went anywhere long term, but had decent buzz at some point (iirc).

Publictivity - Which the towel was thrown in on (& may go open source)

Ramamia - Started with Mark Bao which seems to be barely lingering (<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ramamia.com/>)

I'm not sure if that is a track record.

[EDIT: Downvoted for disagreeing with someone & backing it up - anybody care to explain why?]

<comment><USER3> Track-record as in has actually launched products. You can look at that as not being much, or you can look at it as being more than someone who hasn't done any of that, which would include a good number of people reading this.

<comment><USER7> Interestingly - I always kind of felt & have seen the opposite, all of the people I know from HN have indeed launched something, although my sample size is only 6 people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like the #4 and #6 mainly because we are working on both. :) I totally believe that education industry needs a makeover because it is extremely fragmented and highly inefficient with very less innovation.

<comment><USER8> and the strange thing with this is that everyone agrees education industry needs major innovation but not much VC funding is being poured into it in spite of huge (billions) opportunity.

<comment><USER3> That's because there are powerful interests that aren't interested in innovating here: they like the industry just the way it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Find an idea that you are passionate about and ready to pour time and money into. I would bet that of those ideas maybe 1 or 2 are things you honestly want to do (and think you can do).

<comment><USER4> I agree. This is the starting point you could say. From here, there are about 4 or 5 different pieces of criteria I'm prioritizing by. The biggest one with the most weight is passion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There I was thinking that obviously "jasonlbaptiste" and "markbao" were sock puppets but no, mark bao sounds Chinese. A few clicks confirms it.

So what the hell? Have you guys got an agreement to submit each other's stuff or something? Honestly I don't like that. If jasonlbaptiste writes something good on jasonlbaptiste.com, then just submit it yourself, jasonlbaptiste. You don't need a proxy.

<comment><USER11> Mark is partners with Jason on one of the startups Mark is involved with (it says that on his profile), so it stands to reason he reads Jason's blog a lot. Don't need to be a conspiracy.

<comment><USER10> Markbao did 9/11!

Hm. Too soon?

Anyway, I didn't mean to allege a conspiracy. Just saying that if people write something, and they have an account here, they should take ownership and submit it themselves.

<comment><USER12> What? As soon as I blog anything interesting (or that I think MIGHT be interesting), I should rush over to hacker news and submit it? I always feel weird submitting my own stuff and (honestly) submitting it to social news sites is not the first thing that pops into my head when I blog.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Recap on our Anti-SOPA Campaign: 15,000 Faxes Sent to Congress - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hellofax.com/in-the-news/recap-on-our-anti-sopa-campaign-15000-faxes-sent-to-congress/

<comment><USER2> I sent one of those.

I was surprised when I got an email the next day from my congressman thanking me for contacting them and promising a longer reply once they caught up on their backlog.

Whether they OCR'ed it or had some intern doing data entry, either way, they at least extracted my email address from the fax and emailed me, giving me the feeling someone noticed it.

<comment><USER3> What did the email say? Something like: Thank you for faxing us. Your fax is important to us. We are experiencing heavier than normal fax volume, and your fax will be answered in the order it was received.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious who uses HelloFax. There is a similar service (can't remember the name) that does the same thing for snail mail.

It seems like both have a strong advocacy product, either combined or separately. I can't imagine actually using these services in my day-to-day (but I may lack imagination), but I can definitely see where they could market it to large non-profits and NGO's.

Anyone from HelloFax who can speak to who their user base and thoughts of making advocacy part of the product?

</comment><comment><USER5> And 15,000 faxes not read. Moreover 15,000 people thinking they did something useful, without having done anything useful at all.

In my interviews with Congressional staff who actually work on correspondence desks, they laugh at people sending faxes in and come right out and say that sending faxes, vs any other method of communications, is ineffective.

I understand that HelloFax wants to market itself. But this campaign does more harm than good.

<comment><USER6> I'll start OT by mentioning that the prior HN conversation I cite is apparently not yet indexed by Google -- WTF, Google, you used to be good and prompt at indexing HN content. (I subsequently found it with the HN search dialog, so good for that.)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480712>

Anyway, on the above-linked thread, there are some apparently informed comments to the effect that faxes are, well, effective. For example:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481102>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480952>

However, I see from your profile, cjoh, that you also appear to be well- connected in this domain.

So, I'm not asking to be argumentative, but rather to refine my own and perhaps others' strategies for communicating with their Congress-persons, going forward. What works? What doesn't? And specifically why and how?

For my own part, and perhaps this is now somewhat dated, I understood -- well- written, individual -- faxes to be viewed as more akin to a letter, while arriving in a more timely fashion. That is, a constituent actually sitting down to write out a formal description of their concerns and reasoning and then taking the trouble to send it, typically (or historically?) more trouble than a "Send" button requires.

I guess fax processing may well be all-electronic, at this point, but my hope also lay a bit in perhaps generating a physical object within the office, as opposed to being just/yet one more message on a screen.

And I certainly wish to communicate more than just a "tick" and perhaps a ZIP code categorization in a phone call tally.

I'll typically write an individually addressed letter. I try not to be too long, but I may run to two -- perhaps even three -- pages to outline not just my concern by my reasoning. I try to write these in a top down, aka "newspaper", style, so that the most relevant statements and information can be gleaned in the first paragraphs, with further reasoning, detail, and documentation to follow.

Is this all for naught? Should I instead stick it in an envelop and hope that it gets through all the screening some claim is these days slowing down physical mail, in time to reach the Congress-person's office before a vote and before they are committed to a vote?

Any additional insight would be appreciated. And hopefully this is not too OT for HN.

P.S. I hope my comments on the original, announcement thread from HelloFax did not make the effort seem like a mere marketing ploy. I have no relationship with HelloFax other than being a customer and thinking that the fax campaign was a good idea.

<comment><USER5> Sorry I am late getting back on this. Long day!

I think the best thing I can do to explain this is to actually watch the video at <http://informationdiet.com/live>. It'll take you some time. I'm carving it up now.

But there's a lot in there.

The overarching theme though is that good persuasion is a function with two parameters: sacrifice, and effort. The more sacrifice and effort involved in your persuasion to Congress, the more likely it is to be well received. Thus, a visit to Washington, DC is much more effective than a phone call. A phone call is much more effective than an email. An email is much more effective than a form email. A form email is much more effective than a form fax. And so on.

Here are some tips:

[http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-be-a- better-...](http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-be-a-better- activist)

and

[http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-talk-to- cong...](http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-talk-to-congress)

<comment><USER6> Thank you. I had an initial look the articles the other day, and I'll tackle the video this weekend.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Brown, Cornell and MIT Grads not considered good enough by recruiters - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/11/for-top-employers-brown-c_n_807566.html

<comment><USER3> The article starts, "Think your Brown, Cornell or MIT degree carries weight in the professional world?" But what on earth is the "professional" world? "Top law firms, consulting agencies and investment banks."

In other words, what is being said here is that employers that emphasize pedigree and polish like to hire from schools that emphasize pedigree and polish.

Next week, somebody can publish a study saying that employers of, say, computer programmers, actuaries, and petroleum engineers actually love to hire from MIT, Caltech, Cornell, or CMU. And that would surprise me equally little.

<comment><USER4> From Gladwell's _Outliers_ :

 _In the 1940s and 1950s the old-line law firms of New York operated like a private club. They were all headquartered in downtown Manhattan, in and around Wall Street, in somber, granite-faced buildings. The partners at the top firms graduated from the same Ivy League schools, attended the same churches, and summered in the same oceanside towns on Long Island. They wore conservative gray suits. Their partnerships were known as "white-shoe" firms – in apparent reference to the white bucks favored at the country club or a cocktail party, and they were very particular in who they hired. As Erwin Smigel wrote in_ The Wall Street Lawyer _, his study of the New York legal establishment of that era, they were looking for:

"lawyers who are Nordic, have pleasing personalities and 'clean-cut' appearances, are graduates of the 'right schools', have the 'right' social background and experience in the affairs of the world, and are endowed with tremendous stamina. A former law school dean, in discussing the qualities students need to obtain a job, offers a somewhat more realistic picture. 'To get a job [students] should be long enough on family connections, long enough on ability or long enough on personality, or a combination of these. Something called acceptability is made up of the sum of its parts. If a man has any of these things, he could get a job. If he has two of them, he can have a choice of jobs; if he has three, he could go anywhere.'"_

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. At least nowadays you don't necessarily have to be white, male, or non-Jewish, and the definition of _Ivy League_ has broadened a bit, but this clubbishness is how it's been for a century and more. What, you thought people battled each other to get into Harvard because Harvard's graduate TAs were such talented and dedicated teachers relative to the competition?

<comment><USER3> Precisely. I actually have another comment to make, though, which is about the impedance mismatch between Engineering School culture and Ivy League culture.

I graduated Caltech in 2005. Caltech may be the best example of a school with extremely high academic standards but mediocre credibility with the "white shoe" crowd. Many of my fellow Caltech alums are descended from parents who are highly educated and moderately affluent, but also immigrants and/or Asian and/or Jewish and/or from less fashionable parts of the US (say, Idaho). On top of that, many of us display personality types most easily described as "geeky."

Caltech alums end up in many industries, but everywhere they tend to converge on rather specialized, analytical work. I know two who went into politics... to do statistics for campaigns. I heard of one that went to law school... and became a patent attorney. The ones in finance tend to do quantitative modeling or computer systems. Many, of course, ended up in private sector R&D (biotech, computer programming, engineering, what-have-you). And about half of us went to grad school, often to pursue a career in academia.

Now one reason for this pattern may be that white-shoe firms are not interested in hiring eccentric geeks as much as they are in attracting "well rounded" Ivy League folks. But an equally important reason is _that the eccentric geeks are often not very interested in "white shoe" jobs_ , or _at least don't look down on more specialized work_.

That may be hard for the "white shoe" recruiters to understand. I recall talking to an acquaintance for whom being a McKinsey consultant would be the epitomy of career and life success, surpassable only by joining the Dutch foreign service... and who was almost offended at the idea that I was not in the least interested in such prestigious occupations.

I can easily imagine this attitude rubbing the white shoe folks the wrong way. "What, you are actually considering a career in kernel hacking (or genome hacking, or whatever) as a viable alternative to joining our glitzy band of Masters of the Universe? You must be, like, arrogant or something."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the point of this article?

There are some 2,000+ four year colleges in the US, and "recruiters" are only interested in grads from 3 or 4 of them? I'm a graduate researcher at the MIT Media Lab, no one I know or work with is even interested in job fairs, recruiters, etc.

That said, any company that won't look at me because I'm from MIT and not Princeton isn't the kind of place I would want to work anyway. I'm sure this sort of discrimination makes for great internal culture.

<comment><USER6> _That said, any company that won't look at me because I'm from MIT and not Princeton isn't the kind of place I would want to work anyway. I'm sure this sort of discrimination makes for great internal culture._

Would you count Google in that statement -- with their notoriously discriminating hiring practices with respect to schooling?

<comment><USER5> The handful of people I know at Google are from a variety of academic institutions, ASU, UW, Stanford, and MIT to name a few. Most importantly, they're all passionate, creative hackers who take pride in their work – not riding the prestige of their education.

The answer directly, if google decided folks from Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, MIT were not good enough while those from Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Harvard were - then yes, I would count Google in my statement.

<comment><USER6> That's good to hear -- and sounds like an improvement.

I was having dinner with a coordinator of university job fairs about a year ago and she commented that Google and Facebook were among the worst companies she's ever dealt with respect to hiring practices due to a very large school bias. Many of the schools she works with complains that their students don't even get their resumes looked at. She also note that Microsoft used to be one of those as well, but with Google and FB vacuuming up everybody else they've had to cast their net a bit wider.

Perhaps times are changing?

Anecdotally, the most brilliant people I've ever worked with came from either state schools or CMU or Stanford or MIT (specifically). I've had very little success finding top-notch folks from other established Ivies. Not sure why that is.

I think pg's essay on schools really helps bring some data to that though. It really is the individuals that count.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I graduated from a community college, heh. College is a way for me to maintain social approval* while I learn, and I will then use my knowledge to build my own company & fortune. Working for other people is a guaranteed way to stay middle class.

If you're worried about who is going to hire you, you're worrying about the wrong thing. Jobs are a way to obtain money, but not the best way to obtain it, if you're smart.

*You can be in college and not doing much and people think it's respectable, but if you're at home not working, hacking all day, people think you're lazy and "spending all day on the computer", despite laying the foundation for future wealth.

<comment><USER8> There is a subtle sense of superiority in this comment over people who simply want a job. Which is ironic given your identification of the disrespect people have toward the full-time hacker.

<comment><USER9> Not only that, but he _graduated_. I fear it may already be too late for him:

<http://www.satirewire.com/news/0006/satire-ellison.shtml>

<comment><USER7> If you think I have any level of respect at all for community college, or the education system in the United States in general, you are misinformed.

A poorly trained ape could graduate from any community college in this country. Fact.

I had hoped you would glean from my comment: "If a Cornell grad can't find a job, and I just went to a lowly community college, I must be fucked, right?" NOT SO.

<comment><USER9> All kidding aside--and I was just kidding with my previous comment--while I think there is _vast_ room for improvement in how people are moved through the education system I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't have any level of respect for it or community colleges in particular.

I graduated from high school two years early and started attending the local community college before moving to a 4-year university. My experiences were that yes, the day classes were like an unfortunate extension of high school, but the night classes were generally filled with people who were working during the day and serious about their time in class at night. Compared to the 4-year university, the feel was more collaborative and less competitive. In fact, one of my instructors during those community college days (Don Heidt, I'm thinking of you) was among the best I had. I _still_ think about things that he said in class on a regular basis, and that was ~19 years ago.

So even though "a poorly trained ape could graduate from any community college in this country", I believe community colleges DO provide opportunities for students to better themselves. The problem is that community colleges, since they aren't selective, don't make great differentiators of applicants if you're not interested in trying to determine for yourself how capable someone is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The study (which strangely isn't available on SSRN or the author's website) appears to be about recruiting law and b-school grads.

I wouldn't be that surprised if her results are true. Whenever there are lots of applicants and lots of employer uncertainty about applicant quality, screening on things like credentials that correlate (however weakly) with average ability can still be "rational."

To give an example, assume that GMAT score is a) unobservable by employers and b) perfectly predictive of future performance in the firm. If HBS grads have a mean 1 point advantage over Sloan grads, it makes sense to lexically prefer HBS to Sloan grads, even though slightly less than half the time the employer will make the wrong (ex post) hiring choice.

This dynamic also tends to be self-reinforcing. If credentials are all that matter to future employers (and all schools cost the same), then all students will try to attend the most prestigious school they can. If admissions committees are not pure coin flips, then it makes sense for employers to believe that the HBS/Sloan "distinction" means something.

</comment><comment><USER11> As usual, the HuffPo article is much less informative than the paper itself. From the professor's site here: [http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera...](http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera_lauren.aspx#research)

The following is the abstract:

 _Although a robust literature in sociology and economics has demonstrated a positive relationship between education and socio-economic attainment, the processes through which formal schooling yields enhanced economic rewards remains less clear. Employers play a crucial role in explaining the economic and social returns to formal schooling. Yet, little is known about how employers, particularly elite employers, use and interpret educational credentials in real-life hiring decisions.

In the following article, I analyze how hiring agents in top-tier professional service firms use education to recruit, assess, and select new hires. I find that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to solicit and screen resumes. However, it was not the content of education that elite employers valued but rather its prestige. Employers privileged candidates who possessed a super-elite (e.g., top 5) university affiliation and attributed superior cognitive, cultural, and moral qualities to candidates who had been admitted to such an institution, regardless of their actual performance once there. However, attendance at a super-elite university was insufficient for success in resume screens. Importing the logic of elite university admissions, firms performed a secondary resume screen on the status and intensity of candidates' extracurricular accomplishments and leisure pursuits.

I discuss these findings in terms of the changing nature of credentialism and stratification in higher education to suggest that participation in formalized extracurricular activities has become a new credential of moral character that has monetary conversion value in labor markets._

Key points:

* she looked at top-tier "professional service firms"

* separated out the "super-elite" schools

* found that just going to a super-elite school didn't mean much; you needed to have _done_ something there

</comment><comment><USER12> The abstract of the paper the article quotes is here: <http://tinyurl.com/6bgtwu4> [sciencedirect.com link; too long to put here]

There's no real mention of any university names. This line caught my eye: "However, attendance at a super-elite university was insufficient for success in resume screens. Importing the logic of elite university admissions, firms performed a secondary resume screen on the status and intensity of candidates' extracurricular accomplishments and leisure pursuits."

So it sounds like these 'recruiters' don't just look at what school you come from, but also look at what else you've done outside school during your years. Sounds about fair to me. HuffingtonPost article sounds like it was written in a rather sensational manner.

</comment><comment><USER13> The recruiters in this article are hiring for "top law firms, consulting agencies and investment banks." In those jobs, your number one priority is selling to the wealthy and/or powerful, so this sort of selection makes perfect sense. The recruiters are looking for a set of social skills and connections, not hard skills.

This has been going on forever, and there really isn't any way to "fix the problem." People - including the wealthy - are simply more comfortable with others who share a cultural background. Sales jobs have always sought people with preexisting connections to potential clients.

</comment><comment><USER14> I signed up for this. Having just completed the recruiting process as a senior engineering student at Cornell trying to go into some of the industries listed I call BS.

I could expound for a while on this but to make it brief:

1) Undergrad recruiting for finance and consulting out of Cornell is not as good as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton but it is very easy to break into these industries coming from Cornell compared to coming from any state level schools.

2) It is not an old boys club, anyone can break into the industry from any background. A number of people I spoke with in industry failed to get a job out of college in the area they wanted. Persistence and networking can land you an analyst level banking job in less than three years after graduation. If you want to be a banker you'll do it.

3) A number of programmers I knew wanted to go into the financial sector, partially because of pay, partially because they got tired of geek.

4) I had a lab partner that played on the football team. His day started at 6am with videos (for the team), then breakfast, then weight lifting, then classes/lab, then practice. He didn't settle down until 9pm at which time he could actually start on his homework. His GPA was crap but I find it pretty ignorant for a bunch of hackers to diminish those who pursue athletics in college based upon their own personal bias. Athletics indicates someone willing to work 15+ hours a day, and mind you standard industry work weeks vary from 80 to 130 hours (looking into Moelis and UBS LA if you doubt the 130 hours).

5) My understanding and experience implies that "recruiters" are less involved with the process than they let on. Cornell, and most other high ranked schools, have career services offices that coordinate with a staffing member at the hiring firm. That staffing member will take resumes from the school and send them to employees working the position that is being hired for. While this may generate an element of bias based upon existing employees it is not one to be faulted too heavily when taking a pragmatic standpoint (look at the biases displayed in this thread regarding community college and athletes)

7) I have ~18 resume drafts saved on my computer completed over a 3 months period, ~50 cover letter drafts from a 1 month period, I applied to a total of 49 positions, and it took me a total of 4 months from start (beginning of last summer) to finding a job. I beat my target base salary by 30%, I beat my target max potential bonus by 30%, my promotion schedule works out to be twice as fast as I anticipated, and I will have a much more reasonable work week than those listed above. I am an average to below average applicant (from a resume only perspective) in a down job market, recognizing this I put in a great more effort than my peers that are just starting to look.

@PostOnce: I worked two jobs to support myself through community college. We acted as a feeder college for a Top 10 engineering school. It eventually trickled back from transfer students that the courses at my community college were harder than the equivalents at the Top 10 school. EVERY course in math, science, physics, and engineering transferred completely to the top engineering school and I received FULL credit upon arrival at Cornell for my previous coursework. In response to your lack of respect for community college I offer this: to discount an institution, firm, or individual based upon a potentially baseless or anecdotal prejudice is naive at best and moronic at worst. Maybe you simply wouldn't have been able to take advantage of community college and it is truly a lack of respect for yourself?

Anywho, I've ranted enough.

</comment><comment><USER15> Luckily this is a self-correcting problem. When the grads from all the "second tier" schools, ranging from MIT to the various community colleges, start their own firms and ultimately eat these guys' lunch, it'll become a moot point.

</comment><comment><USER16> There arent many schools, aside from maybe stanford, that can rival the combination of top notch talent and culture of innovation MIT has nurtured (and I never went there). Any company worth working for would be stupid to ignore this.

I've always had a problem with articles citing the famous "some people" (in this case "some recruiters"). Yea, there are "some (really stupid) people" out there in the world that behave in incoherent, irrational ways and make stupid business decisions. We dont need to write articles about these people and their stupid prejudices.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why is MIT so underrated against Harvard? I thought the MIT would teach top computer skills that are so valuable today in banking. Is the CS program in Harvard so much better?

Also looking at the alumni, MIT has produced quite a few successful people in banking [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Massachusetts_Institute...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology_alumni#Finance_and_Consulting) . Of course there are much more Harvard alumni getting at this level also.

<comment><USER18> These are companies that hire out their employees as powerpoint-generating consultants for x00 dollars an hour and need to be able to say that they all went to Harvard/Yale/Princeton. I'm pretty sure it's the kind of racket MIT students aren't very interested in anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> From the article: "According to a forthcoming paper written by Northwestern assistant professor Lauren Rivera, recruiters at top law firms, consulting agencies and investment banks" ...

Of course, it has been like that for years. I'm not sure what the news is, everybody who goes looking for these jobs (and knows what they're talking about) knows it, too.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html>

</comment><comment><USER20> For what it's worth, crew and student government have always been the two most-valued extracurriculars. If you're a good rower then you can get pretty much any job regardless of which college you attended.

<comment><USER21> As somebody who has never been in the US, allow me to scream from the top of my lungs: why?

What possible benefit would being a rower bring to working in an investment bank? I can see student government, but rowing?

<comment><USER22> In addition to the other reasons mentioned, I imagine it is also a decent proxy for a number of other characteristics (white, from a wealthy family) that you might not want to make explicit in your recruiting strategy. I guess Harvard just isn't doing a good enough job screening on those things these days.

<comment><USER20> "There's no surefire way to get into Harvard, but it certainly helps to have every advantage you can get." --A Harvard faculty member on why 2/3rds of the white students are Jewish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What a troll...I can't believe Northwestern gave her grant money to write about schools better than hers and how they do not get into the top consulting and law firms by looking at...ENGINEERING STUDENTS. News flash - <USER2> engineers aren't trying to get into consulting and law firms.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here is a list of schools ranked by recruiters with an emphasis on engineering:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870455410457543...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060.html)

MIT is on there, but the only Ivy on there is Cornell.

<comment><USER25> When a list of engineering schools ranked by recruiters does not have Caltech in the top 25 (or even on the "next 20"), but does have Cal Poly, something is seriously screwed up.</comment></comment>


React Native or Ionic, PhoneGap and Cordova: Find the Best Technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.mindk.com/blog/react-native-vs-ionic-phonegap-cordova/ <comment><USER2> What are people generally using today for cross-platform mobile apps? The last time I asked my friends, they told me PhoneGap, Titanium and others were terrible and most shops seemed to maintain two totally separate apps and code bases.

Has React Native changed that, or do most shops find it easier to maintain multiple apps?</comment>


Chernobyl Hints Radiation May Be Less Dangerous than Thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/chernobyl-hints-radiation-may-be-less-dangerous-than-thought-a-1088744.html <comment><USER2> One thing I did not see mentioned in the article, and which seems to never make it into most articles about the risks (or hypothetical benefits) of radiation exposure, is the massive amount of information we have about the effects of radiation from radiation oncology. Six times as many people as were exposed at Hiroshima are irradiated on purpose in the USA alone every year. And the radiation is actually measured and planned. So Hiroshima is so far from our largest or best data set it is funny. I don't have numbers, but I'm willing to bet that more patients have had radiation treatment for non- cancerous diseases than exist in the Hiroshima cohort.

Epidemiology isn't one of my specialties, but radon and radiation measurement actually are. I'm skeptical about the radon baths, simply because that is NOT a low level of radon, in the sense of a statistically uncertain long-term hazard level. A typical radon bath is in the thousands of pCi/L, which is about a thousand times higher than the level at which mitigation would be required for health reasons for a dwelling. However, the amount of time spent there is low. So, it is like having a non-smoker smoke a thousand cigarettes all at once, instead of over the course of a year. Might that kick-start something in their body? Certainly, but it does not fall under the normal hormesis rubric. And alpha particle damage tends to be high and localized.

Paracelsus said the dose makes the poison, which is true. But in addition, time makes the dose. I have no problem drinking 100 liters of water over a few months, but that would be a fatal dose in an hour. More attention needs to be paid to the time component of radiation dosing and threshold effects.

<comment><USER3> Radiation oncology treatments usually focus a high dose on a single small area during a series of short time periods. So I think it would be difficult to draw any conclusions from that about the likely effects of low-dose whole body exposure over longer periods.

<comment><USER4> Radiation therapy treatments are almost always fractionated, meaning the total dose prescribed by the radiation oncologist is spread fairly evenly across multiple days, typically 25-38 treatments for most disease sites. And since patients are rarely treated on the weekend, it usually takes 1 to 2 months for a patient to complete treatment. I don't know that I would consider 1 to 2 months a short time. There are some exceptions, such as gamma knife for brain cancer, in which the entire prescribed dose is delivered all in one session.

Also, radiation therapy is often used to treat not-so-small areas (volumes). For example, mesothelioma cases often require irradiation of the entire thoracic cavity. And if that isn't a big enough target for you, well, total body irradiation is actually a pretty common modality for certain, less localized, cancers originating in the blood and bone marrow. Both external beam irradiation (for mesothelioma) and total body irradiation treatments are always fractionated, generally delivering no more than 2 Gy to a patient in a single day, to give healthy tissue time to recover between fractions. Having said all that, you are right that this is still quite unlike the conditions presented in the article. Perhaps you would prefer studies analyzing the increased exposure of long-haul international airline flight crews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a pretty terrible article on many levels:

\- It says "Chernobyl hints", but there is no information about Chernobyl. The article itself says "We simply do not know" how many people died of cancer due to Chernobyl.

\- The Radon spa study is very poor. We already know that going to any type of spa is going to improve your immune system, mainly due to the psychological effects. There was no control group in the experiment, so we have no idea if the radon had any effect.

\- We already know that low-level radon exposure increases lung cancer risk.

</comment><comment><USER6> See my answer here: [http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/2490/1792](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/2490/1792)

tl;dr: "There is empirical evidence that suggests that low to medium amounts of absorbed gamma radiation boosts immunity and resilience to ailments such as heart disease, though it may (or may not) increase rates of cancer. It has been suggested and that the reduction in the probability of death from other diseases offsets the increased probability of death from cancer."

<comment><USER7> Risking cancer to diminish heart disease? lol no thanks. I'd rather eat vegetables and take a walk once in a while.

<comment><USER8> Don't walk in sunlight or you'll get exposed to low doses of radiation that "could" cause cancer. Also be cautious about where you buy those vegetables. There is a good chance they could contain things that also "could" cause cancer.

<comment><USER9> Unless you are getting sunburns, this is not true. In fact, sunlight on skin promotes vitamin D production, which is known to help fight cancer.

<comment><USER10> The presence of a sunburn is orthogonal to the fact that you do, in fact, become exposed to radiation in sunlight. That is unequivocally true and trivially proven, whether you receive a sunburn or not.

I don't think the person you are replying to meant that sunlight exposure unconditionally causes cancer, and was simply addressing radiation scare and putting it in context.

<comment><USER9> All the downvotes notwithstanding, there is a direct correlation between the number of severe burns you've had and your chances of getting skin cancer[0], unless you have a genetic predisposition to skin cancer.

A moderate amount of sunlight on skin, without burning, is actually healthy for you, unless you 1) have various illnesses (lupus, for one), or 2) are genetically predisposed to skin cancer.

[0] [http://www.webmd.com/melanoma-skin- cancer/news/20140530/5-or...](http://www.webmd.com/melanoma-skin- cancer/news/20140530/5-or-more-bad-sunburns-while-young-tied-to-higher- melanoma-risk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article from 10/2015 in AAAS is also interesting:

"Humans are worse than radiation for Chernobyl animals, study finds"

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/humans-are-worse- radi...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/humans-are-worse-radiation- chernobyl-animals-study-finds)

</comment><comment><USER12> You might look up radiation hormesis. It is very well documented in animal studies. Damage causes cellular repair mechanisms to undertake more work, and if the damage is little and brief, then there is a net gain in quality control. Less dysfunction, longer healthspan, longer life.

It operates in humans because all other mechanisms of hormesis operate in humans. All very well documented.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477686/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477686/)

"Three aspects of hormesis with low doses of ionizing radiation are presented: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is acceptance by France, Japan, and China of the thousands of studies showing stimulation and/or benefit, with no harm, from low dose irradiation. This includes thousands of people who live in good health with high background radiation. The bad is the nonacceptance of radiation hormesis by the U. S. and most other governments; their linear no threshold (LNT) concept promulgates fear of all radiation and produces laws which have no basis in mammalian physiology. The LNT concept leads to poor health, unreasonable medicine and oppressed industries. The ugly is decades of deception by medical and radiation committees which refuse to consider valid evidence of radiation hormesis in cancer, other diseases, and health. Specific examples are provided for the good, the bad, and the ugly in radiation hormesis."

</comment><comment><USER13> We've known for a long time the LNT model doesn't reflect reality. It's still used because we don't have anything better, it's simple, and people like to put numbers on things even if the numbers are known to be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was just asking how well researched an article like this is, if the get the name of the town wrong. It might be an autocorrect typo, but "Bad Steven" is, was and will be "Bad Steben" (some 20 or so miles from my hometown).

I know, that I just attack a small detail here and that this is not a valid way to argue against something, but I have difficulties trusting some journalist who gets these basics wrong.

<comment><USER15> might have been autocorrect, I think newer versions of Mac OS have that as well (though it can be disabled, of course). Not sure about other systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11060101](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11060101)

</comment><comment><USER17> Recent large-scale research suggests dose-risk relationship holds at small doses for leukemia:

[http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-pin-down-risks-of- low...](http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-pin-down-risks-of-low-dose- radiation-1.17876)

</comment><comment><USER18> Missleading titel - Alternative suggestions:

DNA Repair facilitys more effective then previously assumed. DNA filled with more trash that wont be missed. DNA-DamageDice-Game proves no existing instinct for statistics

My grandfather (he is 91 now) was heavily into radon-research, i still remember measuring those watersamples and hearing the lab-equipment count the plibs when that gas fell apart in the sensoric chamber.

He presumed it to be healthy, but the number of times you roll the DNA- Destructive Dice is still limited, before you come up with a Full House (cancer).

So gamble nature if you must (for example because some asthma makes your lungs half-unuseable), but be aware of the statistics.

</comment><comment><USER19> Thyroid cancer is strongly connected with Iodine-131 contamination, which is basically off in a week or so (decay half-life of about eight days). But if you were exposed, the risk is significant. That we learned from Chernobyl very well. But there is no hint about that in the article.

</comment><comment><USER20> Here's some living proof: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kg4vVYKc90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kg4vVYKc90)

This lady is bitten by a radioactive ant, live on camera.... near Chernobyl.

<comment><USER21> Wasn't this the origin story of Antagone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Humans evolved in sunlight receiving constant low doses of radiation. It seems logical to me that something in which is part of, the environment a species evolved to, would tend to have positive effects.

<comment><USER22> > It seems logical to me that something in which is part of, the environment a > species evolved to, would tend to have positive effects.

Not to me. Now, "tend not to have a negative effect on reproduction", sure.

But there's no reason evolution should make it _beneficial_ , nor even neutral to those past breeding years.

For instance, if radiation caused humans to die younger than otherwise due to cancer, but still to live long enough to crank out a litter of babies and raise them to adulthood.... then evolution probably wouldn't care. Hell, evolution would love the way it gets rid of the chaff and frees up resources for the breeders.

<comment><USER23> Well, the grandmother hypothesis actually suggests that among humans, living healthily into old age to help rear one's grandchildren has evolutionary benefits, even if one stops reproducing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Again? googling site:ycombinator.com "radiation hormesis" gives 15 stories where this has been discussed.

</comment><comment><USER25> tl;dr No.

> _Darmstadt biologist Fournier believes the question is misguided. "Something > that strengthens the cells doesn't necessarily help a person," she says. "If > it mutates, this cell can later be the source of cancer."_

<comment><USER26> I remember some Russians that worked at Chernobyl commenting that the radiation exposure had other negative health effects besides cancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Making the claim "Radioactivity is good for them." without any additional qualification seems irresponsible. One might similarly claim that eating fried chicken and bacon everyday is "good" for someone because it makes them feel happy. Of course, this ignores the fact that doing so dramatically increases their risk of heart disease. Overall, this article seems to be written for the layman, where all forms of radiation are created equal (untrue). The research that the article describes may very well show that sustained low exposure to alpha particle radiation reduces symptoms of arthritis. It should stop there though rather than make judgement as to whether or not it is good or bad.</comment>