What moment in history had the biggest impact? See rule change page 4
Mar 8, 2007 at 5:40 PM Post #106 of 132
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Would you care to explain what the problem with a perfectly civil discussion is exactly, please?


There's nothing wrong with perfectly civil discussion. Six years has taught us time and time again that while some members are perfectly capable of rational, intelligent, and civil discussion on hot topics such as religion and politics, others are not and eventually someone says something that offends someone and the thread invariably turns into an off-topic flamewar creating hard feelings which often stick and spill over into other future completely unrelated discussions. This thread is not supposed to be about religion, yet Jesus and Christianity has received more comments than anything else!

The moderating staff does not have the time nor the inclination to babysit each and every thread, having to make constant value judgments as to what is and isn't offensive ..... which no matter what we do, ultimately someone will disagree with. Nor do we constantly want to be refereeing fights and mud-slinging between members. People tend to be extremely opinionated and passionate regarding politics and especially religion, and most often take things to heart and will argue their point to the death. So to avoid the inevitable anger, hard feelings, insults, flamewars, and hijacked threads, and since this IS primarily an audio discussion site, we simply do not want these topics discussed. Period.

There are plenty of other sites that allow or even specialize in political or religious discussion but Head-fi is not one of them.

Now please, stop taking this thread off topic.
 
Mar 8, 2007 at 5:44 PM Post #107 of 132
i'd say the invention of the internet because without it, there would not be head-fi! aside from it bringing us into the information age...
 
Mar 8, 2007 at 5:59 PM Post #108 of 132
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Originally Posted by Rock&Roll Ninja /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Mr. Tesla leaves Edisons employ only to develop Alternating-Current power, the loudspeaker, the radio, wireless telegraphy (the precursor to wireless phones) and a whole bunch of other science stuff.


Transportation of electricity over great distances allowed for widespread use of electricity in general, which I think is at the core of modern quality of life.

One of the core moments that helped launching the widespread use of AC electricity must certainly be related to Tesla. Maybe 1888 is a good candidate, the year when Tesla partnered with Westinghouse to commercialize AC power generation/distribution systems.
 
Mar 8, 2007 at 6:16 PM Post #109 of 132
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Originally Posted by Coltrane /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Acts themselves are not as important as knowledge. This is again why the invention of the printing press was so essential. While written language was, of course, important, it meant very little for human knowledge and understanding as a whole. It simply helped out with the mechanics of living. I mean, certainly there has been more progress since the printing press than in all of history before it. It is access to knowledge that will always change the world the most.


Written language meant "very little for human knowledge or understanding"? It "simply helped out with mechanics of living"? Man do I disagree with this. We can talk about pre-full language, or oral tradition and what that did, but we're still using pre-press written documents in fields of scholarly research daily (or course reproduced through printed pubs or internet). I don't want to downplay the printing press as it obviously more cleanly broke temporal and financial/democratic boundries and dramatically increased publication quantity. Like the internet more cleaning breaking political/international, finacial/democratic, timelag and quantity boundries even further. The printing press was huge, but written and even oral tradition isn't as narrow as you make it out to be. Also if we're using "more progress" as the yardstick, and we use [I'm guessing here] technological changes for those markers, does that mean the internet will bump off the printing press as progress is quickly catching up with it?

EDIT: mbriant but the difficulty is eliminating broad subjects like religion or politics is how do we talk about the other subjects here like history in this thread? The most obvious to me was a thread discussing movies. Can we talk about Brokeback Mountain here? If someone disagrees with something does that automatically make it political? Are opinions, no matter how insane, protected by the mask of [a popular] religion? It's insane to discuss history without religion being a part of it no matter what your beliefs. Religions have had a huge impact even if they're false. Who would disagree with that? Threads often become most interesting when they get boiled down to the basics and people tend to fight over their core beliefs. That just how it is. Otherwise we should just stick to talking about the weather or sports.
 
Mar 8, 2007 at 7:04 PM Post #112 of 132
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mbriant but the difficulty is eliminating broad subjects like religion or politics is how do we talk about the other subjects here like history in this thread?


I've been following this thread from the beginning. You'll notice that there were religion-related comments made and left un-edited at the beginning of this thread. That was done because a) if the Big Bang theory and Darwin are going to be presented as absolute fact, then to be fair, the opposite side should get their say...and b) because Christianity/Christ was simply mentioned, without judgement, elaboration, or confrontation. But inevitably, instead of simply letting people state their opinion, the other side will and as they indeed started to in this case, start up with off-topic posts questioning the existence of God, the historical facts, etc., etc., which like I said, and which you've been around long enough to know, is insulting to many members and always ends up in a can't win anger/insult filled argument. See post #7 as an example ... it's not on topic and is nothing more than an opinionated sarcastic jab and an insult to the billions of people who do happen to believe in a higher being. It only took 7 posts for this thread to turn south and post #7 clearly shows that unlike what one member has said here, it wasn't the pro-religion side that started it. Very similar to the cable believers/non-believers arguments that regularly erupt, very few minds will be changed and this debate will never end. And I use the term "debate" loosely, as history here at head-fi ( and in the world in general) has shown that these sort of passionate subjects, easily blow up into war. The old well-known adage "Never discuss religion or politics" didn't come out of nowhere.

I'm sorry if this inconveniences some people, I truly am, because I'm one of those inconvenienced by it. We've tried in the past with the Outside Forum, and it just creates too much work, too much anxiety, and too many bad feelings between members to allow these topics. Sure, the first mention or two are usually civil and to the point, but ultimately things go south very fast and very hard.

I don't disagree with what you're saying regarding the historical and human significance of religion, politics, sexual orientation or any other topic where people tend to become polarized and extremely passionate in their beliefs, nor the logic and desirability of being able to include these sort of topics in rational discussion .... but it simply isn't possible to do here as long as we want to keep head-fi friendly and welcoming to everyone. We're supposed to be here to share a common hobby and to enjoy ourselves ... and heated flame wars and hatred between members caused by topics that have nothing to do with audio do not fit into head-fi's philosophy. So some of us are going to have to suck it up and accept that. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who enjoys sex and looking at photos of naked women ( or men, depending on your personal preference ). Surely sex and nudity as well as foul language are a huge part of life as well. But because of Head-fi's diverse audience and the fact that these things can be offensive to a considerable number of people, we don't allow that here either. So like I said, the religious, anti-religious, political, foul-mouthed, or perverted among us will simply have to accept these inconveniences. As far as only talking about sports or the weather, that's a considerable exaggeraton IMO. There are hundreds, if not thousands of threads in the General Discussion forum about all sorts of topics other than that. If anyone feels the topics that are allowed are too light for their tastes, I'm sorry but that's the way it is. We can't please everyone all the time and we can't be all things to all people. It's impossible.

Now, once again, for the last time, please get this thread back on topic. This matter is closed and is non-negotiable.
 
Mar 9, 2007 at 12:53 AM Post #113 of 132
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Originally Posted by Debaser86 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Either that or when Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov literally saved the entire world on September 26th, 1983.


OK, don't leave us uninformed - who is this fellow, and how did he [literally at that] save the entire world??

Laz
 
Mar 9, 2007 at 1:26 AM Post #115 of 132
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Originally Posted by Rock&Roll Ninja /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Well Charlemagne and Jesus were both more than a millenia ago. But to keep things simple, some great moments from the 20th century at almost never were.......


Ouch, I got burned on my own rules
eek.gif
. Good call. And "Either that or when Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov literally saved the entire world on September 26th, 1983." Yes, I believe he averted a worldwide nuclear war with his actions. That guy is awesome.
 
Mar 9, 2007 at 2:17 AM Post #116 of 132
I don't really think this kind of broad topics make for good research papers, because... it's too broad. It's great for a book that makes you go "Hmmmm" but the thing I like about writing about history is the details, it's all in the details, only then can you start to hypothesize.

But, if we stick to the contemporary, then I'd say the World Wars including the Cold War, and the Korea and Vietnam conflicts. I'd start my train of thought that the WWI, WWII, and the Cold War were just part and parcel of the same ongoing war. The flare up of WWII had it's origins in the end of WWI. And WWII didn't end on VJ and VE day. No, the theater just shifted to southeast Asia. Hence the cold war was very very hot outside the western hemisphere, and just a continuation of the same war.

Then I'd uhh, check how right or wrong I was. It's still a very broad topic though.
 
Mar 9, 2007 at 3:06 AM Post #118 of 132
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Originally Posted by lutwey /img/forum/go_quote.gif
ice age--->forcing nomadic humans to shift to a sedimentary lifestyle.
after that all hells break loose and like wat they say the rest is HIStORY


That didn't force the shift to a sedimentary lifestyle. . . . it forced them to migrate, which is the opposite. They didn't develop sedimentary lifestyles until they discovered how to harvest and store wheat.
 
Mar 9, 2007 at 10:15 AM Post #119 of 132
the biggest impact ON THE QUESTION ITSELF happened when heisenberg discovered the uncertainty principle, thereby (among countless other things) proving that questions such as this can't really be answered.

we're part of history, subjects and observers at the same time. it's happening around us. we can certainly form opinions, but the answer eludes us.
 
Mar 9, 2007 at 8:58 PM Post #120 of 132
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Originally Posted by nibiyabi /img/forum/go_quote.gif
They didn't develop sedimentary lifestyles until they discovered how to harvest and store wheat.


Ah, I believe you mean they didn't develop sedimentary lifestyles until they discovered how to harvest rocks
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.

Hmm, I don't feel qualified to give an answer to the historical event that most changed today's quality of life, but I'll throw an answer in there that's often overlooked: specialization in industry. Definitely affected quality of life, but probably not the most
cool.gif
.
 
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