Comments for incrementalism.net

Comment on If Trees Could Scream by Greg Moore

Greg Moore — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:51:10 +0000

Thanks, I’ll tell Japan.

Comment on I’m a California Voter for Obama by Tim Moore

Tim Moore — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:24:41 +0000

Hi, Mike,

I guess that now, a little more than two years after I wrote the post and just over a year since Obama took office, is a pretty good time for me to comment on how things are going with it.

Overall, I’m not terribly disappointed. I try to be pragmatic and I never expected Obama to be a miracle worker. I’m not sure how to feel about the situation with the health care debate. I have mixed feelings about the issue in general, but I’m frustrated by the fact that Congress is more interested in political gamesmanship and obstructionism than helping to provide any kind of improvement. I’m sure the president is frustrated too, but it might have been a little naive of him to expect otherwise. In the end, I think it may be an unnecessary and ultimately meaningless distraction at a time when we don’t need one.

Other than that, though, I think Obama’s judgement has been reasonable and that the country is in a pretty steady place, which is better than I can say for the last administration. Maybe I’m just getting cynical, but after the Bush years, all I really want out of a politician is someone who doesn’t massively screw things up. Making things better is hard work that takes a long time and requires overcoming a lot of obstacles in your way. Making things worse is easy—entropy is on your side.

Thanks for commenting, Mike! Sorry to hear that you’re frustrated with the outcome of the 2008 Democratic primaries. I’m not sure that the economy would have improved much faster with Hillary in office, but maybe she will get her chance in 2016.

Comment on I’m a California Voter for Obama by Mike

Mike — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:05:37 +0000

Well, thanks a hell of a lot for the CRAP you have gotten us into now.
Please do us all a favor and next time there is an election, STAY HOME. YOU OBVIOUSLY DO NOT HAVE THE POWER OF LOGICAL REASONING OR COMMON SENSE.
I hope you are one of them without a job right now.
I guess you are really proud of the “change” so far, huh? We have take a giant step toward socialism and you can pat yourself of the back for that one.

Comment on If Trees Could Scream by Tim Moore

Tim Moore — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:53:52 +0000

Good point, James. Some people, often called "fruitarians" choose to only eat plant-based food that can be harvested without killing the plant, such as fruit, nuts, and seeds. I don't think that it has been well established that this is nutritionally adequate, however.

Comment on If Trees Could Scream by babble

babble — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:27:41 +0000

The super-salient difference here is that eating plants *might* (I cannot stress this enough — *might*) cause suffering in those individual organisms as supposed by some wholly new, amorphous and ill-defined notion of “plant awareness.”

So, we can choose to eat that life which we’re certain – beyond any reasonable doubt – which *does suffer* (animals), or we can eat that life which might be said to “suffer” as an utterly abstract, theoretical question, wholly absent from the mechanics of actual sensation and awareness as we presently understand it (a brain, a central nervous system, sensory organs, nerves, etc.)

The whole thing is just a silly attempt at rationalizing a claim that “I’m going to eat whatever I want, and I don’t actually give a damn about the amount of suffering I’m causing.”

Comment on If Trees Could Scream by ms_charmaine

ms_charmaine — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:38:17 +0000

Thank you for your intellectual response to this article.

Comment on If Trees Could Scream by Kendra

Kendra — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:13:18 +0000

That is an awesome response to this article, thank you!!

Comment on If Trees Could Scream by James Roper

James Roper — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:53:06 +0000

There’s the other counter that many plants have evolved to attract animals to eat them, and even rely on animals eating them in order to reproduce, any fruit baring plant is a perfect example of this. These plants aspire to being eaten. But the same can be said of many animals, such as some species of worm and bacteria, that rely on being eaten in order to survive. But this of course has nothing to do with the moral choice of eating or not eating meat.

Comment on Centering Windows in Mac OS X with AppleScript by Stakker

Stakker — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:41:59 +0000

Well, that did the trick!

Gotta love AppleScript syntax

Thank you for bothering to help. My life is in order again!

Comment on Centering Windows in Mac OS X with AppleScript by Tim Moore

Tim Moore — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:30:03 +0000

Good catch, Stakker,

That’s because windows with an odd-numbered pixel-width can’t be perfectly centered on a screen with an even number of pixels. Fractional pixel values get rounded automatically.

If you want more control over the rounding, you can change this part:

    set bounds of window 1 to {¬
        (screenWidth - windowWidth) / 2.0, ¬
        windowYt, ¬
        (screenWidth + windowWidth) / 2.0, ¬
        windowYb}

to something like this:

    set bounds of window 1 to {¬
        round ((screenWidth - windowWidth) / 2) rounding as taught in school, ¬
        windowYt, ¬
        round ((screenWidth + windowWidth) / 2) rounding as taught in school, ¬
        windowYb}

It’s kind of wordy, but it tells AppleScript to always round .5 up. Normally, it rounds .5 towards the nearest even number.

You can see full documentation for the different rounding options in the AppleScript 2.1 Help: round document on Apple’s site.