Author: opoudjis

Is Australia a constitutionally Anglican country?

By: | Post date: August 30, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Australia

https://au.news.yahoo.com/video/watch/32478931/federal-politicians-attend-church-service-ahead-of-parliament-swearing-in/#page1 The question has gotten much more airplay around the Red Mass (including the West Wing episode The Red Mass). And Catholicism isn’t anywhere near as close to a State religion in the US, as Anglicanism would have been in Australia before Federation. Ulysses Elias’ answer points out the wording in the Australian constitution. A […]

Why were Jews the money lenders in Christian Europe?

By: | Post date: August 29, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

May or not be a comment; but to elaborate on Peter Flom’s answer. In Byzantium, there was no comparable ban on interest. So Jews were not the money lenders in Orthodox Christian Europe. Jews were driven to do different shit-work that Christians there wouldn’t touch. Literally shit-work. Jews were predominantly tanners in Byzantium. Before the […]

If you were caught masturbating, what should you do?

By: | Post date: August 29, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

The great Scots comedian Billy Connolly had a good strategy for this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=a0RqqF62Xac “THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE! AND NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON! YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE THIS!” And proceed to disarm them with the shaggy dog story that ensues… Answered 2016-08-29 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/If-you-were-caught-masturbating-what-should-you-do/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

If Earth were to explode in 10 hours, what would you do?

By: | Post date: August 29, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Personal

I wrote a poem about this scenario. In my teens, which is the right time to be pondering such a scenario. The final verse of said poem is: Ni iris — laborejen. Malkontraŭ la malbeno. We went — to the office. Un-against the un-blessing. I’d like to think that’s still my answer. But it’s not. […]

How will the easy access to Pornography change our culture?

By: | Post date: August 29, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

It’s already changed the culture significantly, of course. It has had a change in what kinds of sex teenagers expect to have, since that’s become a primary source of information on sex for them; but I’m not sure that counts as a cultural change. It’s better addressed in a question like What Is the effect […]

How many books can an Academic expect to sell?

By: | Post date: August 29, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Academia

With monographs, you’re pretty much selling to university libraries. And the books are priced to match: north of $150. If you still 300 copies, you’re doing well. Answered 2016-08-29 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/How-many-books-can-an-Academic-expect-to-sell/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

What are some examples of translations of literature that are better than the original?

By: | Post date: August 27, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

Germans have long thought that the Schlegel & Tieck translations of Shakespeare are better than the original. The conceit of Shakespeare being a translation from the original Klingon is an echo of that. Not necessarily better, but certainly smoother is the best known translation of Cavafy, by Keeley & Sherrard. A lot of Cavafy is […]

How can we build a microservice using Go?

By: | Post date: August 27, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Information Technology

Like you build a microservice in any other programming language, but with the advantage that concurrency is baked into the language. You’ll need a messaging system as your backend for services, that can talk to Golang. Kafka will, and so will NATS. You will need a HTTP server front end in Golang, that receives RESTful […]

Why aren’t brown eyes romanticized unlike other eye colors?

By: | Post date: August 25, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

Several culture-specific factors, as others have pointed out: scarcity, attitudes towards ethnic minorities, constructs of beauty, yadda yadda. I conducted the extremely scientific experiment of searching mavromata “brown-eyed girl” and galanomata “blue-eyed girl” on the Greek lyrics site stixoi.info. Brown-eyed win 87 to 20—despite blue-eyed Greeks being rather rare. And there is a definite cultural […]

Among all the dictators that ever existed, which one would you deem to be the worst and why?

By: | Post date: August 25, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

People loathe the pissing contest between Hitler and Stalin that always arises with these questions, but it’s curiously absent from this thread. So: Stalin. Because with Hitler, at least you knew who the enemies were throughout his reign. With Stalin, the enemies changed depending on what side of bed he got up on. If both […]

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