Reading indeed makes you smarter. Studies indicate that reading regularly enhances brain functions. It allows you to think better, respond more efficiently to problems, make you a better speaker, and expand your knowledge and vocabulary. The culminating result is that you become smarter.
Reviewer: contradiction in terms - favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - December 24, 2016
Subject: A book about life under a total ideology
If you read Gulag Archipelago and your take-away was "the bourgeois classes have treasonous ideas," then I don't know what to tell you!
"Marxism had a grip on the academic communities of all the major universities, once and for all I was able to resist the drip, drip, drip of the propaganda" in particular is exactly the kind of thing a Soviet ideologue would have said, although they would not have said Marxism but imperialism or liberalism or something.
One of Solzhenitsyn's themes in this book is not that Marxism had some unique poison in it or that the Soviet Union was a shocking stain on the otherwise spotless behaviour of the human race, but that it all HAD to turn out like that in a state with a perfect ideology, an answer to everything with no holes in it.
p. 173-174 of I-II: "Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble―and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.
"Ideology―that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. [...]
"Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dedicated his book about the end state of communism ‘to all those who did not live to tell it.’ //
My parents emigrated from the Soviet Union. From what they told me, I developed a deep reluctance to being frog-marched to Kolyma courtesy of unilateral disarmament peaceniks, who are nowadays called “woke” with alternate grievances but the same collectivist Borg mentality. //
In part I’s fourth chapter, Solzhenitsyn encourages humility about human vulnerability to evil. “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” //
In part VII’s third chapter, Solzhenitsyn excoriates apologists for Soviet misrule: “All you freedom-loving ‘left-wing’ thinkers in the West! … As far as you are concerned, this whole book of mine is a waste of effort. You may suddenly understand it all someday — but only when you yourselves hear ‘hands behind your backs there!’ and step ashore on our Archipelago.” He knew his disclosures would meet that era’s version of cancel culture. //
The will to dominate runs deep in the human psyche. Archipelago reminds us such despotic cruelty became commonplace in living memory with few held accountable.
Moreover, such atrocities continue today behind barbed wire in western China, North Korea, and elsewhere on the globe. Solzhenitsyn warns us all of the consequences should resistance to totalitarianism fail.
Indeed, in all the cases above, the film version of the story is the definitive version — the original text is, at best, complementary to the film. This is because the film is the better telling of the story. And it’s not simply because some stories are better told as films for visual purposes. It’s because the texts did not best express the story. It doesn’t mean the books are bad — Baum’s Oz books, for one, are a delightful read. It simply means the story is more completely serviced in film.
As is the case with The Lord of the Rings. Director Peter Jackson is famously a huge fan of the Tolkien books, but based on the movies (and the various commentary I’ve read from and about the man) I think it’s more accurate to say he’s a huge fan of Middle-Earth — he seems very nearly enamored of the work other artists have done in the place as he is with Tolkien’s prose.
AWARD-WINNING AND BEST-SELLING AUTHORS CONTRIBUTE NEW STORIES: All-new fiction from Dragon Award winner and New York Times best-selling author David Weber, Dragon Award nominee D.J. Butler, best seller Jody Lynn Nye, indie best sellers Chris Kennedy and Mark Wandrey, and more. Also featuring an introduction by multi-award-winning and New York Times best-selling author Larry Correia.
It is 2185 CE. Humans now live throughout the Solar System, but their most ambitious adventure is about to begin. The starship Victoria will carry over 10,000 colonists to a new world outside the solar system. The larger-than-life exploits of those colonists will become legendary. The colonists will build a new civilization, and the actions of a few individuals will become famous—and infamous—forever marking their new colony with the Founder Effect.
Writing is great fun. I have been doing so rather diligently since 1990. More recently, I've published 20 books in just the past decade. My portfolio spans four technical works, eleven novels, and five anthologies, including a short story, The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, which was nominated for the 2014 Sidewise Awards for Alternate History!
If you’ve spent any time around UNIX, you’ve no doubt learned to use and appreciate cron, the ubiquitous job scheduler that comes with almost every version of UNIX that exists. Cron is simple and easy to use, and most important, it just works. It sure beats having to remember to run your backups by hand, for example.
But cron does have its limits. Today’s enterprises are larger, more interdependent, and more interconnected than ever before, and cron just hasn’t kept up. These days, virtual servers can spring into existence on demand. There are accounting jobs that have to run after billing jobs have completed, but before the backups run.
Author : Sol Lederman
What Is a Container and How Are Containers Used? A starting point for an exploration of containers and how they’re used is this simple definition: a container is a packaging format for a unit of software that ships together.
A container is a format that encapsulates a set of software and its dependencies, the minimal set of runtime resources the software needs to do its function. A container is a form of virtualization that is similar to a virtual machine (VM) in some ways and different in others. VMs encapsulate functionality in the form of the application platform and its dependencies. The key difference between VMs and containers is that each VM has its own full-sized OS, while containers typically have a more minimal OS.
Author : Greg Bledsoe
“If you build it they will come.” Are freeways built to travel between existing communities, or do communities spring up around freeways? Is this a chicken-and-egg problem, or is there a complex interaction where such things shape each other?
The use of UNIX and Linux security tools raises similar questions. Do people work the way they do because of the tools they have, or do people have the tools they have because of the way they work?
Author: Kyle Rankin
This book explores system administrator fundamentals. These days, DevOps has made even the job title “system administrator” seem a bit archaic, much like the “systems analyst” title it replaced. These DevOps positions are rather different from typical sysadmin jobs in the past in that they have a much larger emphasis on software development far beyond basic shell scripting. As a result, they often are filled with people with software development backgrounds without much prior sys- admin experience. In the past, sysadmins would enter the role at a junior level and be mentored by a senior sysadmin on the team, but in many cases currently, companies go quite a while with cloud outsourcing before their first DevOps hire. As a result, DevOps engineers might be thrust into the role at a junior level with no mentor around apart from search engines and Stack Overflow posts. In this book, I expound on some of the lessons I’ve learned through the years that might be obvious to longtime sysadmins but may be news to someone just coming into this position.
Download PDF
Bottom Line Up Front.
Or, in other words, make your point immediately, then follow up with only the most pertinent supporting information to help set context or tone. //
Why do we write the long way?
The type of writing we’re required to master in school trains us in the opposite direction. We’re raised to produce that longer, more verbose style. It’s also more polite and conversational, and as such is a more natural flow for many writers.
But it’s not the most efficient way to convey this sort of information. //
It’s unlikely that publishers would even consider changing to this format, but it’s been an interesting exercise to think about. It’s certainly a wish of mine that these books were written in a format that was more efficient to consume.
The jingling of the door-bell announced four arrivals: a blast of cold December wind; a spray of fine snowflakes borne upon it; the sound of horses clopping up the cobbled street; and two gentlemen. They were good portly fellows, pleasant to behold. The younger of the pair doffed his top hat and shook fresh snow from the brim as the elder consulted a list.
“Cratchit,” read the old gentleman. “Ware-housing, Pawn-brokering, Business Loans.” He looked up to find the sole occupant of the establishment seated behind a large wooden desk: a slight, sandy-haired young man of twenty-odd years with a genial expression. The gentleman adjusted his spectacles. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. P. Cratchit?”
Historian Bruce Gilley’s provocative book, ‘In Defense of German Colonialism,’ makes a compelling case that many historical narratives surrounding Africa are motivated by politics, not facts. //
Our anti-Western conceptions of colonial Africa are equally misinformed. In 1904, a policy in German East Africa decreed that all children born to slaves beginning in 1906 were free. Moreover, between 1891 and 1912, more than 50,000 slaves in the colony were freed by legal, social, and financial means. By 1920, slavery had virtually been eradicated from the region.
German East Africa was also environmentally conscious, codifying laws prohibiting unlicensed elephant hunting and creating the first game reserves. It promoted education by natives: By 1910, there were more than 4,000 students in state schools. “The Germans have accomplished marvels,” noted a 1924 British report on local education initiatives. The education system in German colonies provided instruction in local histories, cultures, and geographies, as well as technical subjects common in German curricula. Because of this, local language media prospered. “German transformed Swahili from a coastal language of Muslim elites to the lingua franca for the future country of Tanzania,” writes Gilley.
Prescription for the Planet
by Tom Blees
"This is the most important book that has ever been written on sustainable development... You MUST read it! It is not A revolution, it is THE revolution, THE way to go."
- Bruno Comby Ph.D, Founder and President of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy
Click here to download the entire book as a PDF courtesy of the author and SCGI.
Plentiful Energy
The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor: The complex history of a simple reactor technology, with emphasis on its scientific basis for non-specialists
Authored by Charles E. Till, Yoon Il Chang
Audrey Stockin Eyler
Ortlip art history and images, 22 pages
all the tags from https://b.plas.ml
1st-amendment 2nd-amendment 4th-amendment 5th-amendment 9/11 a8 abortion acl adhd afghanistan africa a/i air-conditioning amateur-radio amazon america american android animals anti-americanism antifa anti-semitism antiv antivirus aoip apollo apple appliances archaeology architecture archive art astronomy audio automation avatar aviation backup bash batteries belleville bible biden bill-of-rights biology bookmarks books borg bush business calibre camping capitalism cellphone censorship chemistry children china christianity church cia clinton cloud coldwar communication communist composed computers congress conservatives constitution construction cooking copyleft copyright corruption cosmology counseling creation crime cron crypto culture culture-of-death cummins data database ddt dd-wrt defense democrats depression desantis development diagrams diamonds disinformation diy dns documentation dokuwiki domains dprk drm drm-tpm drugs dvd dysautonomia earth ebay ebola ebook economics education efficiency electricity electronics elements elwa email energy engineering english environment environmentalism epa ethernet ethics europe euthanasia evolution faa facebook family fbi fcc feminism finance firewall flightsim flowers fonts français france fraud freebsd free-speech fun games gardening genealogy generation generators geography geology gifts git global-warming google gop government gpl gps graphics green-energy grounding hdd-test healthcare help history hollywood homeschool hormones hosting houses hp html humor hunting hvac hymns hyper-v imap immigration india infosec infotech insects instruments interesting internet investing ip-addressing iran iraq irs islam israel itec j6 journalism jumpcloud justice kindle kodi language ldap leadership leftist leftists legal lego lgbt liberia liberty linguistics linux literature locks make malaria malware management maps markdown marriage mars math media medical meshcentral metatek metric microbit microsoft mikrotik military minecraft minidisc missions moon morality mothers motorola movies mp3 museum music mythtv names nasa nature navigation navy network news nextcloud ntp nuclear obama ocean omega opensource organizing ortlip osmc oxygen paint palemoon paper parents passwords patents patriotism pdf petroleum pets pews photography photo-mgmt physics piano picasa plesk podcast poetry police politics pollution pornography pots prayer pregnancy presentations press printers privacy programming progressive progressives prolife psychology purchasing python quotes rabbits rabies racism radiation radio railroad reagan recipes recording recycling reference regulations religion renewables republicans resume riots rockets r-pi russia russiagate safety samba satellites sbe science sci-fi scotus secularism security servers shipping ships shooting shortwave signal sjw slavery sleep snakes socialism social-media software solar space spacex spam spf spideroak sports ssh statistics steampowered streaming supplement surveillance sync tarsnap taxes tck tds technology telephones television terrorism tesla theology thorium thumbnail thunderbird time tls tools toyota trains transformers travel trump tsa twitter typography ukraine unions united.nations unix ups usa vaccinations vangelis vehicles veracrypt video virtualbox virus vitamin vivaldi vlc voting vpn w3w war water weather web whatsapp who wifi wikipedia windows wordpress wuflu ww2 xigmanas xkcd youtube zfs