Today I learned...

[shinta|hikari]

Did you just notice how many changes you were proposing to the Japanese language just to validate your point?

Using Romaji will make things difficult due to homonyms, not to mention the alphabet is English, not Japanese. They can't use pure hiragana and katakana because Japanese text has no spaces between words.

Exclusive Romaji and Hiragana/Katakana text is also going to be much longer because they simply take more space.

Kanji is also used in typed text, so penmanship affects only a small facet of it.

You simply cannot compare losing cursive to losing kanji. Cursive is being lost due to a lack of practicality, while Kanji is being kept because of practicality. Cursive is a writing style, while Kanji is an integral part of the Japanese language.

[Animeniax]

Kanji is hardly practical. The Japanese like to use it to push the notion that their language is difficult and complex, when it is needlessly so. They need to break from their Chinese forbears and stop using characters derived from them. The language of the future is English anyway.

[shinta|hikari]

I meant keeping Kanji was more practical. Changing it will take too much effort for no real gain.

Kanji is a pain to learn, but it has its purpose, most of which I have mentioned already.

[Animeniax]

Yeah kanji is worthwhile, it's a shame kids aren't learning it as well as they should. I'm still shocked that cursive writing is not being taught at some schools anymore. Only good thing I guess is that I didn't have to lend my class notes out because the guy couldn't read them since they were in cursive. He's a cool guy though so it kind of sucks I couldn't help him out.

[Buffalobiian]

I find it strange that my cursive writing is no faster than the blick writer I sat next to (might be an odd case, and it was a long time ago). But basically I write in cursive because it's cool.

[Xelbair]

most people over here write in cursive - but i don't - because my handwriting is so bad that i could be considered a doctor.

[Animeniax]

most people over here write in cursive - but i don't - because my handwriting is so bad that i could be considered a doctor.

Ha, that's funny. They do tend to scribble prescriptions like they want to punish pharmacists.

My handwriting is a combination of cursive and block lettering mixed together.

[Buffalobiian]

most people over here write in cursive - but i don't - because my handwriting is so bad that i could be considered a doctor.

Hard-to-read-writing is the first thing that I qualified for as far as being a medical professional goes.

Today I had a look at sunglasses, and learned that there's essentially a monopoly with huge mark-ups. The company called Luxottica owns nearly everything in the eyewear industry.

Eg. Raybands:

Costs the consumer: $200
Costs the factory: $3


Further readings:
Interview with Luxottica CEO
Interview with marketting professor

[Buffalobiian]

Today I learned..

..that Japan has capital punishment.

I never knew that.

[Kraco]

..that Japan has capital punishment.

I never knew that.

... or you wouldn't have visited the country? But you need not worry: They aren't in the habit of executing foreigners, unlike some muslim countries.

[Animeniax]

... or you wouldn't have visited the country? But you need not worry: They aren't in the habit of executing foreigners, unlike some muslim countries.

Foreigners can get away with stuff that locals can't. That's how much the Japanese love foreigners, or at least the idea of them.

[enkoujin]

The concept of thought-terminating cliches.

They are fallacies/arguments used to effectively and immediately disarm another party's arguments in a debate, no matter how valid the other party's arguments are. The thing about them is that other individuals (i.e., the public) are more likely to believe in them as well because of the paradigms that have been structured with our past experiences. Another characteristic of this concept is that you can barely argue against them because they are either general enough to be true or immediately divides issues into black and white.

e.g., A "Calm down; stop being so angry." statement can effectively destroy an argument even if the other person is not even angry because the phrase is associated with the common observation that angry people cannot think clearly. Even if an individual refutes this idea, they have already lost because the topic has already been effectively changed.

The interesting aspect of this concept is that I've been guilty of using these a few times in my life, but I never really thought about its effects consciously until this point.

[Ryllharu]

Want to see it in real time (well, relatively real time)?

Thread

The topic has changed no less than four times.

[enkoujin]

The concept of monkeysphere.

The idea that 150 people is the maximum amount of people you keep close to you and also explains why people are assholes to one another.

[Ryllharu]

I wouldn't say it is what makes people assholes to each other. It's more of the reason for detactment in lieu of an emotional response.

People aren't wracked by grief when they are no longer close to the person who died, or they're not ecstatic for someone else when that person has their first child, etc.

[Kraco]

Actually I'm not sure if I've learned anything, so this is more like a question for the Americans. I read earlier on Guru3D an article featuring some screenshots from the next Windows Mobile build. Apparently a Microsoft employee had dropped a phone with the software on a bus, somebody had found it, and immediate sold it on eBay. So, my question is: In the USA, if you find something obviously misplaced in a public place, are you automatically entitled full ownership to the item like this story suggests (although whether a bus owned by a bus company is perfectly public is another question)? If this is true, then how can the law limit this situation so that somebody doesn't simply pick up your bike and sell it when you are visiting a store, for example, or snatch your laptop from a cafeteria table when you turn your back to get a sauce bottle from a neighbouring table? Because it seems to me that if this isn't the case, it doesn't take a Sherlock to find the seller of an eBay item, considering eBay likely doesn't want to be profiled as a black market either.

[Ryllharu]

Receipt of stolen property is illegal. If you know the seller didn't own it (which would be pretty obvious here), taking ownership of it is a federal crime.

Now you can argue the value of a prototype like that is in excess of $5000, and I assume that is the route that the more famous scenario took of Apple's iPhone prototype that ended up in the hands of a Gizmodo editor, but there isn't a "finders keepers" law, full ownership (incl. right to resell) is not granted.

But IANAL, I'm sure there are some subtleties here and there that I'm missing.

If it doesn't fall under that law or there is no intent to sell, then I guess that's up to an individual's moral code.

edit: The proper avenue is Lost and Found. If it isn't claimed by a certain period of time, the finder can claim it as their own. Individual jurisdictions apply.

[Kraco]

So, in other words the person finding and then promptly selling the phone did it knowing he could be tracked down and prosecuted (assuming the whole thing isn't a big fake story and the screenshots straight from Photoshop). Well, I guess it's even sadder to know that the world is full of that sort of people, and it's no joke when the cops say that most criminals are simply stupid and thus get caught eventually.

[Death BOO Z]

no. what they say is that most criminals who are caught are stupid.
small-time crime doesn't pay well - if you've got the brainz and you live in a crap stiuation, you'd do better the high road.
but if you're smart and were born to the right folks... the sky is the limit, and it's just immoral, not illegal.

[Animeniax]

This came up recently in my life when a package was accidentally delivered to the wrong address. From what I was told, it was a criminal act to keep and open the package if it is not addressed to you. I imagine it's the same for any property that comes into your possession that doesn't belong to you. You cannot use it or sell it legally simply because you have possession of it.