My offhand impression is that when I was in Germany, consumers were oddly suspicious of the Internet in general and very suspicious of social media in particular. That suspicion was somewhat translated into a lackadaisical attitude about service quality. Perhaps that attitude is finally changing because DT simply won't care unless there is a sufficiently large enough vocal public to force the issue.
I read von Daniken as a very young kid and loved it. But I read it, and enjoyed it very much, as a science fiction genre. I never bought it, but I admired the effort. And so I thank him for stimulating a child's imagination. Well done Mr. V!
I was very naive when I discovered his books as a child in my fathers bookshelf. Luckily my father told me that I should be careful not to take anything as "the truth" from any of Däniken's books. It helped me a lot with keeping the necessary scepticism while still enjoying the books and I was really grateful for this advice.
This was the first book that I picked out to buy for myself as a child (I remember pestering my parents for it at the Kroch’s and Brentano’s on Lake Street in Oak Park back in the 70s). I read it over and over and thanks to that, when I later came to stories like the Hebrews wandering the desert in Exodus, it was hard to put the von Däniken nonsense out of my mind.
Psychologists have there own version of this (which managed to achieve a sort of respectability) in Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind which has the same sort of furtive/animistic fallacies are put forth to justify a questionable conclusion.
Hey, Julian Jaynes! Haven't heard that name in a while. I remember that book fondly, compelling story telling. IMO Richard Dawkins said it best, it's either fucking nuts or fucking genius, no in between.
And I watched The Flintstones as a very young kid and loved it. And it deeply influenced how I thought cavemen lived. Well done, Hanna-Barbera!
The problem is that Erich von Däniken's "science fiction" was pseudo-scientific claptrap, which he sold as the truth, that perpetuated harmful cultural stereotypes, was patronizingly racist, also plagiarized French author Robert Charroux's "The Morning of the Magicians", and he never admitted he was wrong despite mountains of indisputable evidence.
At least Hanna-Barbera framed The Flintstones as fiction. Yabba Dabba Doo!
And at least Scooby Doo's whole schtick was that supernaturalism is just creeps wearing rubber masks. Scooby Doobie Doo!
The lesson we should have learnt from Scooby Doo is that most of the world's problems are created by rich old guys trying to protect their money/investment.
Just peruse the list of great works that Ancient Aliens proponents claim could not have been built by the people who built them. Do they make that claim about the Parthenon? No. Other than Stonehenge, it's all stuff built outside of Western Civilization.
It could be a series of coincidences, or it could be old strains of racist anthropology, briefly suppressed by Boasian Cultural Anthropology, finding a new conspiratorial outlet.
So Trump is racist therefore von Däniken is also? There’s plenty to criticize about ancient alien bozos, we don’t need to fabricate additional reasons to dislike them
> Robert Charroux's "The Morning of the Magicians"
Charroux didn't write that one, he was likely influenced by it.
> an earlier French work, The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (1960), which is likely to have been a direct inspiration for both Charroux and Von Däniken
The world is full of "head scratchers". But that makes it more important not just to yell "aliens!", but to exercise scientific curiosity. This is what makes me most angry about his works, he discourages people from trying to work out solutions for mysterious phenomena.
Many thanks for this entry. Knowing the reason for the shutdown hang is very valuable. It prevents me futzing my brains out and doing damage whilst trying to repair it.
I did experience something odd however. At some point during tweaking various settings, both in the new OS (linux) and BIOS, I was unable to F2 access the BIOS during start. I thought to find the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS but I COULD NOT FIND THE DAMNED THING. So before sending it back to ASUS, I removed the PCIe drive since it had personal info on it.
But booting AFTER removing the PCIe drive gave me access to the BIOS. I thought BIOS boot was independent of hard drive presence?
Anyway, after booting the BIOS I rescued my new machine and only had two screws left over after taking the darn thing apart!
trivia: first boot into linux resulted in "no hd found". Turns out this ASUS BIOS won't detect the linux hd unless you set VMD to disabled which enables AHCI. Thanks for the obfuscation ASUS!
It's less dangerous but man oh man did my life improve when I quit. I now wake up refreshed, my cognition seems sharper and my sleep now generates dreams again, which I suspect is cognitively healthier. I would very much like to see improved education about the various downsides of using this less dangerous drug, as I'm sure lives would be improved by less usage and moderate recreational use instead of habitual overindulgence which was my error.
I have a hard time falling asleep... my mind races constantly. About everything. Anything. Could be random stuff, not just stress. I dream constantly, thank god they are rarely nightmares. I don't smoke it makes me paranoid. I think I need to try a sleep study.
Talk to a neurologist for a sleep study. But, first try reading a book ~1 hour before bed.
The racing mind is often your brain continuing to think/work on the day's problems. Using a screen (phone/tablet, computer, tv) right before bed has been proven to keep your mind active. Switch to something not involving a screen to allow your brain to wind down before falling asleep.
Back when my daughter was small, I was waiting in a line to get to the ticket window at the ballpark. A woman walked up to us, said my daughter was lovely, and gave us 2 tickets to the premium section of the park (the fancy bathroom section as my daughter called it). We saw Manny Ramirez hit his 500th! What a nice gesture. Whenever we went back, and when I was making a bit more money, I always bought one or two tickets after that to give away. Being unexpectedly nice in an unexpected way not only put a bit of joy in my life, it prompted me to do the same. That reminds me. I need to do something unexpected for a stranger. Thanks for the reminder!
Libraries are community centers in many cities and towns, and, to my own family offer much to pre-school learners in events and activities - friends are made during these events and enrich the community. Librarians offer personalized assistance to reading seekers, both to children and adults, and are a quiet haven for readers of all incomes. Library periodicals on offer can only be accessed online by paid subscription and the audio book offerings are great for those who prefer audio to reading, for whatever reason. No. Libraries offer something quite different than the internet, and communities would be diminished if they closed.
That said, the idea of funding home internet for the poor is an excellent idea, and should be entertained. I'd be for it.
A few more than 30 years ago it was possible to buy plane tickets from the classified pages from people who, for whatever reason, couldn't take the flight.
And of course the ticket was in their name, but no one cared. It was treated by the airlines like a purchased token. You had the token, you flew.
Happened to me in the '80's. '71 Buick Skylark. When we went to lunch, our receptionist asked us to drive her Buick as it "was making funny noises." We found it in the 5 storey carpark, took it out and it drove fine. However, we got back rather late, and the carpark was full so we had to park it on the highest level. When we returned, I asked our receptionist, "I thought it odd that you had a St Christopher statue on the dash, I thought you were Baptist?" "No, I don't have a St Christopher on the dash," she replied.
Apparently we took the wrong Buick. The owner, we conjectured, was going to report it stolen since it was sitting 4 floors up on the exposed level.
Not knowing what kind of liability to which we were exposed, we kept it to ourselves.
My mom once opened the wrong '89 Dodge Caravan when grocery shopping in the early nineties, and it wasn't until she got in to drive that she realized it wasn't hers. She said the seat was too far back and then she actually stopped to look around. She said she had simply assumed it was hers since the key worked.
Depends on the manufacturer how many unique bittings would be made. I believe ~1000 was common. So pretty low chance but high enough a few people have stories here or there.
Speaking of junk, I was in Syria, many years ago, when it had about 250k tourists yearly, under Hafez al-Assad . I was in the company of an Assyriologist and in a shop of a vendor I knew (who sold artifacts under the table).
The vendor proudly showed us a new acquisition, an ancient cylinder seal. The archeologist examined it and told him it was a fake, because he explained, "I can read this language, and it is gibberish."
The UCLA archeologist, then excavating at Tel Mozan with Giorgio Buccellati, had 2 dead languages under his belt, a requirement for his Phd. I was rather in awe of the fellow - 2 dead languages!
Pro-tip: never buy artifacts without an archeologist to advise you. It's likely ethically wrong anyway, and likewise stupid unless you're an expert.
Damn. I'm the opposite. When learning a language I'm careful to pick languages which are culturally influencial and have a prospect of continuing to be - it's not enough that they're alive. Ironically, last new language I learned was Russian, and then Putin goes and invades Ukraine. Fuck my life.
All this to say I have infinite respect for someone who'd learn a dead language, let alone two. I'm glad someone is doing this work, and fortunately it's not me.
