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Comment Don't like cold, for good reasons. (Score 1) 429

Vegetables, fresh vegetables from my garden. Even with a cold frame, you can't get a good fresh mouth-watering tomato December-February. (I've seen cherry tomatoes grown in late February, but I don't like them anyway.) Try growing habaneros in the middle of winter; ain't gonna happen. Zucchini are your friends, frost (or snow for that matter) is not your zucchini's friend.

Oh, and mead won't brew at your suggested 40 degree temperature (without a LOT of help). You need at least 50 degrees, and 60-75 is ideal.

Knew I'd get you with that last one.

Comment Definitions Semantics Arguments (Score 1) 608

"Free Will" and "Deterministic" are both linguistic constructions that have no meaning beyond what they are given. Their utility in arguments depends on their having the same meaning on all sides of the arguments. Many, but not all philosophers define "Free Will" and "Deterministic" in such a way as to make them logically mutually exclusive. The argument that this article is relevant to makes that assumption. Arguing otherwise is not adding to the argument, it is just an emotional or political attempt to change the definitions of the words, while you take one side of the argument or another. (You are taking the hard deterministic argument, and changing the meaning of "Free Will".)

Although semantic arguments sound reasonable. And often are well thought out. They add nothing to the debate, and even often cloud the waters of established debates, as sometimes the meaning shifts go unnoticed on first reading. When involved in a Philosophical argument, try to first find out what definitions for words are being used then use those definitions yourself, even when they differ from how you usually use them.

It might sound odd at first, that you can be asked to completely change definitions you use in every-day life when talking in a specific field, but every field does something similar. Just think of the following words that mean very different things to a programmer than a non-programmer: arguments, objects, languages, environment, variables, functions, etc.

Editorial

Journal Journal: Politics; frustrations of being different 21

I'm having a lot of problems trying to find like minds. Unlike so many out there I don't get my views from a party platform, thus my views on some subjects are classified as 'liberal' other views are 'conservitive.' Here's a little detail; I think you will understand why I have such problem finding people who agree with me.

I am:

User Journal

Journal Journal: First Post 2

This seems like my only chance to get a first post on /. so I suppose I'll take it. Feel free to post comments about anything you really want to here, as making a comment about this entry would be pretty lame. Almost as lame as this entry. Ok, as you can probably tell by now, I'm just messing with the system.

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HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!

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