Slashdot Mirror

'Religion is...wildly caricatured" in and of it's nature. Religion is silly; belief without proof.

Science is the new religion in that it's belief in repeatibility. Frankly, religion is just holding us back man.

Now let's clone something.

Religion is ignored in gaming, or if it is portrayed, it's wildly caricatured

-- MarkusQ

a nation full of hatred towards Americans and the ultimate goal of killing Americans

There is no such fucking thing. That's baseless hyperbole used to sucker you twits into supporting the war. Everyone does things for a reason. Everyone wants something. Even terrorists have demands. It's very nice to be able to simplify politics down to a children's book level. But it isn't simple. The Iraqi people are people. They have needs and desires. They would like this to happen or that to happen. They would like jobs, and goodies, and reasonable prices, and many of the same things you like. Even Saddam Hussein is a person. You can have whatever opinion you want of him, maybe he's insane, maybe he's been an asshole, maybe he's been murderous tyrant, but I will not grant you that he's a two dimensional caricature of anti-American hatred, because that's just propaganda.

I'm curious, do you apply the same principles in your day to day life when you run into a disagreement? If a restaurant puts the wrong kind of dressing on your salad, do you just not even bother "YAPPING" at the server because he probably won't give you the free salad you deserve? Do you just walk out of the restaurant with your salad and without paying? Is that how you solve disagreements? Selfish doesn't even begin to cover it. Sometimes you have to make some concessions, even if it's really, really distasteful and you don't want to. I can't remember the last time the USA gave favourable concessions to anyone in a negotiating process. You may have the most powerful military in the world, but that doesn't make it right to demand that every disagreement in the world be solved your way.

Oh, and congratulations on your "lasting peace" in both Afghanistan and Iraq, I hear that's working out really well.

Egh. I'd think the way to do targeted content would be to bring Japanese developers on-board. This stuff... presenting it to a Japanese audience strikes me as like Squaresoft populating a game targeted at Americans with caricatured cowboys and indians.

'course, I am not Japanese, so who knows, maybe the players will eat it up. Certainly, Americans would be all over a cowboys & indians Squaresoft title, and probably find any stereotyping in it amusingly quaint.

As a white guy, I find those 50's caricatures of "people" to be every bit as insulting and racist as the old black and white cartoon "monkeys"

Why would you expect that? Has there ever been a movie that met your philosophy quotas? Would even Waking Life make the cut? None of the ideas in that moving are something you wouldn't hear a philosophy 101 undergrad say. Pure ideas simply don't render well into visual medium.

The Matrix is great, possibly even artistically great, for two reasons--how well it translates those fairly simple ideas into the visual (Waking Life rules for the same reason), and the suggested isomorphism between the machines hallucinogenic domination of humanity and the forms of social control that exist in our present day world (or at least a anarchist's punk caricature thereof). The sci-fi aspects are secondary to the social parable aspects--which is why things like the obviously second law of thermodynamic violations like "human batteries" are allowed.

Sure, you can read about a brain in a vat in your textbook, but that doesn't capture the creepy absurdity of the idea--you wake up, go to work, work hard all day--but it's just an illusion--you're actually sleeping suspended in nutritive fluid, with tubes sticking out of your servo-mechanical orifices, while sadistic machines are poking and proding you on a doomed Earth under an eternal nighttime sky. You never knew it, but the entire planet is dedicated to making sure you never wake up.

There's nothing new about the idea, it's the visual translationg that's noteable.

But the truly interesting ideas aren't in the philosophy or science of it, but in the politics. The people of the Matrix are required to go to school even though learning can take place in an instant, and go to work even though the "food" they purchase and consume has no effect on their metabolism--their jobs don't exist to serve any purpose, they exist merely as a distraction, to prevent an uprising by the masses.

Consider our present day world--a very miniscule population is required to grow the food we eat in America, and an ever dwindling population is required to produce the products we use Check the numbers--we aren't losing manufacturing jobs to China and India, the World is losing jobs to robots and automation. The government subsidizes both agriculture and manufacturing to keep those populations artificially high. Capitalism, like the Matrix, exists not to meet our material needs, but merely to keep the masses occupied. I'm not saying I believe this, but I believe it is the hidden message of the Matrix--that whether or not we live in an actual "Matrix" of physical hallucination, we still live our day to day lives in a "social" hallucination.

Indeed, perhaps the Second Law ignorance of the Matrix is in fact a parody of the Second Law ignorance of capitalism--why am I paid to work, when work merely uses up the only thing that's TRULY scarce in our world, useable energy.

Okay, I'm reaching on that last one.

Still, one interesting thing I remember from the second movie, when Zion's leader is comparing the machines that dominate humans to keep themselves energized to the machines humans dominate in order to keep Zion running. There's a point made about civil disobediance--what we have power over we grow to depend upon, and therefore has power over us. Zion's machines are model of the humans in the Matrix--which itself is a parable of modern social control. I thought that was kind of clever.

. . . but the reprehensible caricature they portray goes a long way towards discrediting churches (off-topic, sorry).

I agree completely with the point that the experience of moviegoing cannot be replaced by a TV or computer monitor.

Some movies are much more fun when you and the crowd cheer together during an exciting moment, laugh together at a joke, etc.

It's the same for baseball, which I don't much care for. Although I find televised baseball to be mind-numbingly boring, I did attend a live game (free tickets), and it was actually enjoyable. Sitting in the stands, seeing the field, being part of the group in the stands--it definitely adds to the experience.

For example, if humans lack the genome for an exoskeleton, and exoskeletons are "nature's selection" for space survivability, then the "micro-evolutionary theory" says that humans who live in space should eventually experience genetic mutations from which exoskeleton code will appear.

"All too often creationists spend their time arguing with a straw-man caricature of evolution."

Well put.

You missed the joke. It is a joke that ridicules you and your "insight".

You did a damn good job of proving it correct. Which is a terrible thing to do to a joke.

This would probably scare the author of said joke. One can only assume he was posting it as a caricature of people too dumb to have opinions of their own. And yet you took the bait.

I was worried about the future of humanity before, but now I'm terrified.

Never mind that this quote is insanely out of context and seriously misconstrued (as it is in every single instance of it being widely quoted in the internet which I have seen). It is clearly just placed in the conclusion as another ad hominem belch which began at the top of the article... but, check the link he provides! It links off to a GOSSIP column on MSNBC where "Jeannette Walls Delivers the Scoop"; and the page featurers a big-toothed caricature of the author, herself, for any who may lack confidence in her journalistic presence.

Whee.

The character cut-scenes were hilarious and so are their super-powers. The Howard Dean scream attack and the Hulk Hogan attacks had me rolling. The Republican Evil-Boss caricatures were funny as well.

You are aware that Brad Pitt's character was an ironic caricature, right?

I'm a Canadian, and I've found the same thing. I know plenty of Yankees (and a few South'ners) and almost uniformly, they've been interesting and worthwhile people. Whereas I don't agree with all of them on all things (some are tea-totallers, which I as a Canadian find bizarre, some are profoundly religious right (but in a quiet non-proselytizing way), some are very much of the 'America right or wrong' crowd...), but they've usually been able to have a sensible discussion of right and wrong and take into account the right of Canada and Canadians to differ with them. And while doing so, none of them have said unpleasant or belittling things about us.

Contrast this with how many of my allegedly university educated (and college educated) friends look at the Americans - often times the reactions are vitriolic, uncharitable, and reflect only a superficial interface with *actual* Americans, as opposed to some sort of caricature seen on TV or presented in Canadian (opinionated, spin-doctoring, discontent-formenting) media.

If they're all so smart and well educated, they should be able to 'walk a mile in the other guys shoes' and should know better than to form opinions of a whole body of people by the outliers. And they should know that it makes little sense to form opinions with little data. But this paucity of data seems to lead to very nasty and very mean-spirited opinions.

Whether we as Canadians should or should not have joined the war in Iraq, whether we should support the war on terror, whether we have serious border issues ourselves with our own intelligence and police agencies reporting fairly significant terrorist planning and fundraising activities within our borders, etc. - all of these things are things that should be calmly discussed and upon which differing points of view can be coped-with. We should still be able to maintain a civil relationships with our US neighbours.

It is no mark of distinction, no badge of honour, no sign of integrity or eductation to blindly bash those you've never met, to categorize them blankly based on a few noisy mouthpieces, nor to show your own small-hearted nature by vilifying people who have (for the most part) very similar aspirations, lives, and motivations...

To my mind, this kind of behaviour (especially given the way we open our arms to people the rest of the world over) is just pathetic. We should have our own opinions, but we shouldn't be obnoxious buttheads when it comes to our neighbours in the south.

Many of my American friends have apologized for the kind of stereo-typical American tourista that you sometimes encounter ("Those are the kind of people that we even wince about... they make us all look bad.") I feel very much that way about Canadians that can't disagree with their American counterparts without resorting to unthoughtful and unflattering epithets, errant classifications, and bilious polemic. This kind of conduct is unjustified and makes me want to disown these boorish clowns... or at least makes me embarassed to admit to being from the same country, which is sad, because I love the place and I took and Oath to defend it... I just wish some of the people would act a bit more like polite, rational adults and less like petulant, self-absorbed, egocentric children....

There is another path which i'm familiar with: 1) One of their employees has a great idea (2) management ignore it. (3) Another company (Apple, Google) has the same idea and runs with it (4) Microsoft management notices the other company's implementation and starts wheels in motion to create caricature of original idea. (5) Employee (1) points out that they could have implemented this 5 yrs earlier and/or had a patent. (6) Management doesn't like "I told you" mentality.

Fuck right off. While there are many things we athe rest of Canada taking up the ass to appease the fucking seperatists, the metric system isn't one of them. Metric conversion started before the whiny little fucks decided that 150 years of the British protecting their language and culture from being stomped on by the Americans was somehow "repression". With out the British crown's protection, these simpering little pricks would be reduced to caricatures doing Kia commercials - "Aieee es'ti" like the american french.

Just got back home from the Mojave airport and let me tell you the experience of watching this amazing aircraft reach the edge of space was awesome. Six friends and I drove from Los Angeles to Mojave and when we arrived there around 3 am and the place was already full of people. For the next few hours we explored around the field, bought some very reasonably priced breakfast burritos and ran around the tarmac. All the vendors seemed to be local groups and didn't rip you off (except for coffee and krispie cremes which were a somewhat large dollar a piece).

Mojave airport is really cool in itself, no fences around and you can wander all over if you want. We got some good spots as near to the takeoff and landing as possible ( they did restrict where you could watch the event, and the ships wheels actually left the ground about 50 yards north of us) and camped out. Everybody around was really excited. Many had come from really far away, like this pair of guys we met from Seattle. I'm sure that there were many who were from much further than that. There was a big mix of people. Lots of old timer aviation types, college age kids, and families. I'm sure much of the town of Mojave were there. We talked to this one guy who was bringing a group of kids from the local high school who were in their special engineering program(something I didn't have at my HS).

When they announced that the ship was actually going to take off on time I was pretty surprised. I just had a feeling it was going to be delayed. At about 6:40 the low altitude chase plane took off, it was a bright red little single engine plane which according to the announcer was flown by the spaceshipone pilot the night before in order to pull 6G's so that he could go to sleep! Next (I think) came the medium altitude chase plane, which was this really cool and modern looking craft with propellers in the back and a little wing on the nose. Then came White Knight, carring SpaceShipOne which look completely unorthodox and bizarre in person, even if you've already seen pictures of them. It taxied along the tarmac that ran past the crowd did a U turn then sped up and soared off of the runway to a cheering crowd. As everybody watched the ship gain altitude, the high altitude chase taxied and lifted off. This jet was pretty interesting, It sort of looked like a fighter jet that had been squashed to make it all squat lookin, sort of a caricature of a fighter jet. The ship climbed really slowly, about an hour of circling around the airfield getting smaller and smaller. Then we got the word that the rocked was going to take off . The ship was about 2/3 of the way almost directly between the horizon and the sun (the sun being fairly low since this is about 7:45 am). Then all of a sudden this huge contrail appeared and traveled straight up just to the right of the sun traveling at an amazing speed. The crowd loved it , after watching the ship climb slowly for an hour this was really dramatic. The trail kept moving up until it seemed to be about 70degrees above the horizon when the engine cut off. After a few minutes with everybody searching the sky for the craft *boom*, a little sonic boom let loose and the ship then appeared. It circled around a few times on its way down and met up with the chase planes. They all flew in a pretty tight formation and the ship finally made an amazingly smooth landing considering it was an unpowered odd looking bulbous craft. Everybody was ecstatic as SpaceShipOne rolled by, this odd looking craft had reached the edge of space and had made it back in one piece. After that, the low altitude chase plane made a flyby, which was pretty cool but then the topper was when White Night flew towards the crowd then pulled up proudly displaying it's bizarre silouette.

I'm really really happy that I got to have this experience. This amazing flight was the first time in my 19 years that I felt that I was actually witnessing history being made with my own eyes.

The press doesn't exist to inform, it exists to manipulate. If you don't want your words, your likeness and a distorted Through-the-looking-glass version of your beliefs used to sell newspapers and score points for an editorial team then you'd be stupid to talk to the press.

Several SF authors have caricatured the journalistic process very well by imagining future technology that can not only edit what you said, and who you appear to say it to (both tricks used extensively by journalists and so-called documentary makers already) but also where you are when you say it, what you look like "We need to demonise this guy, add more shadow and get rid of that brightly colored T-shirt" and your mannerisms "He's still too Sunday School, take out the hand waving and have him stare straight into the camera, no blinking".

Unless you can correctly read the intentions of the press and agree with their agenda (for example if you want a government brought down, a sympathetic press may be the right people to go to with your story) you'll inevitably be worse off after they've finished with you - and why should they care?

Let news journalists stick to standing around "at the scene" idly speculating. If people must talk to them, let it be briefed representatives with pre-agreed announcements and no questions. A Fox News "live" showing a reporter inventing his own explanation for what might have just happened is much less powerful than 30 seconds of "independent witnesses" edited down from an hour of interviews. Thus weakened they might even go back to reporting some actual news.

Out of all the occasions when people I've lived with, worked with or just be aquainted with were interviewed with the press I can't think of a single instance where even the BASIC FACTS were correctly reported. When journalists attempt to report on areas in which I have expertise I can't help but cringe as they twist and skew everything. Some of the aquaintances I've mentioned saw this kind of thing and believed they could fix it. Being experts in the field they called people and made arrangement to ensure that journalists would talk to them, not whoever had been feeding them this nonsense. Of course after being interviewed they were shocked (not me) to see the same inaccuracies, and outright distortions printed, broadcast and used to manipulate the public.

Human communication is about manipulating other people into doing what you want. That's why we learned to talk. Journalists are just better trained and less honest about it. Big woop.

I'd like to think that Terry Prachett is like Monty Python meets JRR Tolken.

In some sense, yes. The Rincewind books are definitely in this vein. On the other hand... the Witches and Guards books, IMHO, have changed significantly from their beginnings, and are no longer humorous. Oh, they've got their funny bits, sure - quite a lot of funny bits, as a matter of fact. But...

"Lords and Ladies"? "Carpe Juggulum"? "Night Watch"? "The Truth"? "Wee Free Men"? Hardly laugh-a-minute riots. They're a little bit darker, a little bit too serious to be classified as comedy. The characters are less caricatures and more believable, more real, and the problems they deal with are... well, problems. The kind that can't be solved by the classic bumbling wizard, or (extremely) experienced barbarian horde, and that sometimes are a bit uncomfortable because they seem too much like real problems instead of parodies of problems.

The change came upon the books gradually, I think, so that it can be hard to notice unless something brings it to your attention. For me, it was "Night Watch", when Carcer and Vimes were up on the University roof, and Carcer said something like:

"I can see your house from up here."

That sent chills down my spine. It wasn't funny. It wasn't melodramatic. It wasn't a parody. It wasn't even scary, in a typical fantasy/horror way. It was an amoral killer casually threatening the life of a woman and a child - nothing at all like either Monty Python or JRR Tolken.

Sorry, but I actually drive a real car, and Gran Tourismo is nothing but a caricature of physics. Particularly where rear-wheel drive cars are concerned.

And, yes, I've done power drifts in a real car (I was young and foolish then).

Moreover, the LAST thing you want to teach a sixteen year old is how to drive fast. Because what a beginning driver really lacks is the judgement to know WHEN they can drive fast safely. Far better to teach them safe driving, and do the race car course next year or the year after.

Jon Acheson

Who was it that caused you to write the joke above? It appears that he is a far more interesting person that how you've caricatured him. A quote, a webpage or a name would satisfy me.