To those still smoking and in the grips of marketing induced denial...
It really indicates how stupid the writer thinks everyone else is, that despite an endless barrage of information about the deleterious effects of smoking from family, friends, doctors, news programs, newspapers, magazines, sitcoms, movies, cartoons, graffiti, puppet shows, and government literature that somehow the little indirect marketing (tenuously through movies and TV) somehow overrides our ability to make an actual informed decision.
"Denial" is used as a weaselly way to undermine any volitional behaviour which a writer personally disagrees with, and is then used as a justification for maintaining their belief regardless of claims to the contrary.
Personally, I quit and am happy as hell that I did. That doesn't mean I was unaware of the effects, or romanticized smoking, or didn't enjoy it. I did enjoy it, and immediate gratification seemed a fair trade off for the inevitable future outcome. It was a personal/philosophical value decision, and it was no worse than the position I hold now, it's just not the position I happen to hold any more.
FUCK BETA
Lawsuits take years to accomplish and it's not uncommon for the injured party to go bankrupt before a verdict can be rendered.
Yeah, just look at SCO! [ducks]
That was what we were taught - the lower classes smell. And here, obviously, you are at an impassable barrier. For no feeling of like or dislike is quite so fundamentalas a physical feeling. Race hatred, religious hatred, differences of education, of temperament, of intellect, even differences of moral code, can be got over; but physical repulsion cannot.
Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier
but you're trying to tell me the math majors lust after a dictionary?
Maybe, or maybe he's trying to say that the maths majors lust after them. I'll have to check my dictionary.
So while I agree that many may be overestimating their abilities,
I think it's more likely to work the other way, actually. Manipulating material and tools all day would probably hone one's spatial reasoning far more than dealing with abstract or logical problems. I just got back from a 600 mile solo kayak trip in NW Manitoba a couple of weeks ago, and I only looked at my compass 6 times, twice to set magnetic north, and four times to double check what I already knew. I think growing up on a farm fixing engines, welding broken machinery, or inventing machinery modifications probably did a lot more for my sense of direction and spatial reasoning than calculus, PERL programming, or any other strictly rational activity.
Honestly... I think people who know a lot of science are probably the biggest problem with science education.
I can't remember the exact quote, but in "Down and Out..." Orwell says something like:
"Socialists, like Christians, are generally the worst advertisements for their beliefs"
It's probably true for most people who primarily identify themselves by a shared group belief, really.
Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"