Slashdot Mirror
Obama Calls Today's Ubiquitous Gadgets and Information "a Distraction"
zaphod was one of several readers unhappy with the sentiment expressed in President Obama's graduation address to the students of Virginia's Hampton University, writing: "According to Obama, 'information becomes a distraction' when it comes to iPads, the Xbox, etc. (All items he admits not knowing how to use.) He's basically saying we are getting too much information too quickly, and from 'unreliable sources.' Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views."
CNET has a slightly different, less critical reaction, focusing on the differences among the actual devices named; they note that the Xbox is not an iPad.
black president! :-)
Perhaps if his administration had the transparency he promised on the campaign trail, it would be easy to get the information people are seeking from credible, reliable sources.
Whether the President and his administration like it, this form of information sharing is very likely here to stay. Perhaps the best reaction would be to embrace it and use it as a positive differentiator from other administrations.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
'information becomes a distraction'
I think it's more accurately stated that 'information can be a distraction' but, you know, it can also be a very useful tool both in learning and communicating. Everyone can have a Facebook account and everyone can read blogs but the programmer that spends much of his time reading reading blogs about programming and uses Facebook only to keep up with his friends periodically is going to outpace the programmer that spends 90% of his time on Facebook and 5% of his time reading movie reviews on blogs.
So, by and large, it comes down to -- surprise surprise -- responsible time management. Yes, too much information via the internet and mobile devices is a double edged sword. I cannot keep up with the papers on arxiv but if I learn to manage my time and quickly recognize which papers are worth my time then it is very valuable to an academic. Or I could spend my time playing Farmville. Both occupy my time and can be distractions.
Information is a very powerful tool, no matter how much you want to blame the method and frequency of delivery it's ultimately up to you what you do with it. I read transcript and honestly I thought it was closer to this dualism than the summary lets on.
Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views.
I don't think so. He actually encourages reading both sides:
This development can be both good and bad for democracy. For if we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we will become more polarized and set in our ways. And that will only reinforce and even deepen the political divides in this country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.
For once the Slashdot summary seemed to be even more politically charged and biased than the actual politician. The correct message is to manage your time well and exercise caution. Sound advice actually.
My work here is dung.
Apparently he didn't consider Xbox a distraction when he was running in-game campaign ads on it.
That was then, this is now. After all, you can't trust media to be "accurate" if it isn't state controlled, like in China. Now. Before, you couldn't trust the media *because* it was state-controlled. Like HuffPo. Oh, wait...
-=Maggie Leber=-
who can't let go of his smartphone.
He meant that as information becomes decentralized, the government cannot control its distribution. The Users become the Producers and Creators, and also their own Network. Dissent can become viral, and that buffoon Robert Gibbs can barely stamp out a cockroach let alone an Internet meme. The best education also entertains, and the most effective dissent begins with satire.
"It's OK to enjoy your Bread and Circuses, Americans," Obama concluded his speech. "Just be sure that they are government issue. Thank You and Good Night."
Is this the same man who couldn't/wouldn't be separated from his blackberry?
I was intending to watch it but then I got a tweet from my bff and had to update my Facebook page and status on Foursquare.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
"What Jefferson recognized... that in the long run, their improbable experiment -- called America -- wouldn't work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn't have the best interests of all the people at heart."
Right on, and that is precisely the problem we have right now: most of the citizens do not care. People are not just unaware of the issues facing America and what their government is doing; they seem not to care about any of it at all.
Palm trees and 8
It's always "aliens have invaded", or "nuke goes off in major city", or "Duke Nukem is still not available"...
Playing their damn hoppity-hip music way too loud on their iWalkPods, and will they please get off his lawn, he ain't going to ask them again.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Bill Gates talked about Information Fatigue years ago when Microsoft was trying to bring together disparate information systems with their backend server tools.
Here's an article from 2006
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2006/05-17eim.mspx
The idea was that it wasn't too much information coming in that was the problem. Rather it was too much pure data and "dumb" information being presented to users. This led to users getting too wrapped up in filtering this information themselves and spending too little time with the data that they truly needed.
Pascal once wrote "The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter." Cutting through the vast amount of unnecessary data to get to important intelligence is time consuming. Obama is right, but he's also a decade late.
I agree there's no reliable information and alot of disinformation saturating quality information on the internet.
To me it's a shame seeing "online newssites" or the online version of paper news are following the sensationalist online buzz-kindof attitude instead of bringing quality and authenticity.
You can very well disagree, as information needs to be free but it gets hard to filter out relevant and solid information and one doesn't always have the time to take an intersection of information.
Take this simple example: Moonlanding.
On youtube alone I would get claims of it being faked, structures being found on the moon, ancient spacetravelling civilisations, Nibiru, a 10th planet who is floating around, a theory our Astroid belt is actually a remnant of an impact with earth and Anunaki visiting our planet thousands of years ago, the deeper you dig, the further there's misinformation.
Now, as the critical minds of the average slashdotter knows to seperate or "make an educated guess" on which information is correct, the median intersection will not be able to do so.
There is, in my view, a need for trustable information without it being controlled by a government or an entity with simular interests.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I agree with Obama's sentiment. We are entering an age where we are being bombarded with information 24 hours a day, beyond our ability to consume it. It is a real problem that is only getting worse. We are going to turn into a society of ADD junkies hooked on useless information.
Hey, for once I agree with St. Obama. I realize that geeks are never going to admit it, but there is a price for our geekery. How many of us are distracted, and have short attention spans. Let's take a moment to think about...
Hey look... an ipad....
W
But that's because obama was the one saying it, so it was ok. Frankly, all this information makes me scared and confused. I wish they would start a department of truth in the government to tell me what I should be thinking.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
The speech writer was a bit off their game that day from the sounds of it. There are way to many writers currently confusing message with medium, and gadgets with tools. If the user is focussed or disciplined, it all becomes much more about what they are trying to do. So no, Obama, our brains are not rotting from too much ibox. Maybe if the Obama administration made some proactive legislation around data privacy, rights to anonymity, restrictions on advertising in public commons, rather than slinging mud around about simple living, just because the wifey gardens.
Waiting for the other shoe to...
Did he announce this using twitter?
The ducks in the bathroom are not mine. [http://www.27bslash6.com]
He's the President of the USA but cannot work out how to use an iPod or xBox?
And this is coming from the man who "accidentally" let it slip, whilst he was campaigning for the Presidency that he had an iPod of his own.
Does his wife have to put music on it for him? Or his children maybe?
A lot of expensive and finely crafted bullshit hits the news on frequent occasions and often the revelation that it is a lie is often much later, towards the back of the newspaper or in a few blogs.
The ultimate of course is the WMD "intelligence" from a PR firm but of course there is plenty that all sides of politics would be disgusted by.
Good questions to ask about extreme views are who is paying for it, who benefits, and why isn't it on the BBC or other overseas news sources?
You really need a better news source than a coke addled ex-DJ who is advertising whatever view he is paid to push each week.
Obama wasn't calling out particular devices. 5 years ago it would gave been "laptops on wifi, iPods, MP3 players, Cellphones with net connections, Playstation and Nintendo mobile" Yes both iPods and mp3 players :) adds that presidential touch.
In any case he's warning an at risk group of university students to focus on their education rather than being distracted by always on media and Media.
These speeches aren't always 100% addressing the greatr society. Sometimes they specifically address the physical audience.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I wish they would start a department of truth in the government to tell me what I should be thinking.
I'm assuming you've read 1984?
This was a graduation address, not a state of the union speech. He's not laying down policy here. He's speaking to a very specific audience (graduating students) about a very specific topic (transitioning from school to the workforce). This was not the preamble to new legislation, nor should it be misconstrued as such.
IMHO, Eisenhower's Council on Youth Fitness was a far more intrusive condemnation of how we spent our leisure time than this.
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
It's only a distraction if kids do not get taught how to effectively manage all of this information. Can't figure out why most classes in school revolve around memorizing repetitive mind numbing facts instead of getting into the theory. In todays world it's about knowing how to research and analyze information from the internet and other data sources.
www.newviewmedia.com
I just find it funny, seeing as he was the one who wouldn't give up his Blackberry...
Careful. You're liable to get modded down by someone.
While there's some truth to what Obama says about being having so much information that it becomes a distraction (similar comments have been made about disclosure overload: everyone writes incredibly long, boring, impossible-to-parse "terms of service", "EULA", and other bits attached to products...), the original article does have a point about most people's definition of an "unreliable source" being "a source I don't agree with."
Obama's political opponents flourish in certain media. So it's in his best interest (while being rather divorced from honesty and reality) for him to call them names and tar them as "unreliable." Likewise, the media sections that do love Obama - such as the alphabet-soup media - are more than happy to not cover certain stories. And this follows from all walks of life, just not Obama. For instance, let's take the Israeli/Palestinian bit.
Did you know that within a week of signing the Oslo Accords, Yassir Arafat was back on Palestinian radio, comparing the Oslo Agreement to the Truce of Medina (whereby Mohammed the "prophet" entered into a 10-year truce, then broke it two years later because he figured his army was now big enough to win), calling Oslo "the great deception"? No? Why not? Probably because the alphabet-soup media was, at the time, invested in Oslo.
Did you know that the Waqf, the Palestinian "authority" on the squatter's mosque at "Al Aqsa", have been deliberately excavating and destroying irreplaceable archaeological artifacts from beneath the site? And why not? Again, the story's been buried.
Take the recent terrorist attack at Times Square. At 5pm that day, I was listening to ABC News, when they announced the search was on for a "40 year old white male" at the urging of the Obama administration. Whoops! You can find plenty of coverage of media spokesboobs talking about how they "didn't want" it to be what it clearly is: another taliban-type attack.
Information can indeed be distraction, but just as important is realizing that bias expresses itself in many forms. You can tag certain things with certain words - I freely admit I consider the Waqf to be illegitimate, from studying the history of the squatter's mosque, but others can freely feel differently. You can write tilted stories that blatantly misuse or misrepresent statistics. You can write "statistics" that have almost no connection to reality, due to bad sampling or tilted questions, and then quote them in a seemingly "neutral" piece "covering" the survey results. Or you can just bury a story entirely. Anyone who trusts one side's media or the other, exclusively, is setting themselves up for trouble.
I gotta run and get my popcorn for the 'discussions' on this topic. Let the political ego nukes fly!
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
the Truth becomes a distraction.
No longer can government officials just hide behind friends in the press (print/broadcast). Very much how blogs turned up the heat on big media in 2004 it was a signal that many in government failed to see, that is, we the people can watch you, we can report on you, and we will.
Hence the little "trial balloons" floated about going after blogs and their commercial associations (reviewing products, people, etc). Anything to get some leverage on the new free voice. Can't wait for the changes to election laws going after blogs.
Nah, the blogs are grassroots and grassroots are the one thing DC is having a problem with. Trying to counter with their SEIU fake gatherings to offset Tea Partiers got exposed by blogs, not the news media. Face it DC, you can lie through the press but the press won't be our main source going forward.
It also works well for the leaders of other countries, namely Iran. Technology may for the short time give the regular person the upper hand until it can regulated into oblivion
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I know that most governments are corrupt and all that, but did Obama really say anything wrong this time? He was addressing a group of students when he said that information overload and quickly accessible information can be distracting. You know what? He's right. I'm a student. I find video games, TV shows, Slashdot, overclocking forums, Linux forums, email, telephone, new software, Facebook notifications, to be hugely distracting. I would go so far as to say that I am mildly addicted to new, bite-sized pieces of information. It doesn't help that I already have ADHD - but the Internet and other computer-based media go a long way in keeping me off-track.
I would call Twitter, blogs, Facebook, etc. unreliable in the sense that you're hearing only part of the story from one person. They might be putting their own spin on it to support their own beliefs, or they might be drawing conclusions which are valid given the knowledge they have but which are not when all the information is taken into account.
"According to Obama, 'information becomes a distraction' when it comes to iPads, the Xbox, etc. (All items he admits not knowing how to use.) He's basically saying we are getting too much information too quickly, and from 'unreliable sources.'
More reliable sources include politicians??? I'd much rather learn from a fictional X-Box game. It's much more likely to be based on the truth.
It should be illegal for any politician to pass laws about things he has no fucking idea about. If he hasn't used that class of gadget he should just shut his fucking mouth. I had high hopes for your president, but I have to say they're in ruins.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
...Wow, did half of the posters here even read the article? Obama's not pro-censorship, he's not arguing that x-box's, twitter and facebook should be taken away:
"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,"
"some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction," in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.
What Obama is saying, is that in this day and age of massive media coverage you shouldn't always believe what you read. He's encouraging the students to find alternate sources of information, to actually investigate something before spouting off and further propagating the Chinese Whisper... You know, basically what most of the people replying to this article did.
is here, and here is the paragraph that people are taking issue with:
What I find interesting is not the assertion about the devices, and information becoming entertainment — that's been true since at least the beginnings of edutainment and of news as entertainment almost twenty years ago. For me, the interesting part is the first sentence: "And meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter." It seems to me that throughout history, the times when truth has been the major component of the information we are given have been few and far between. For example, the news media in the US, despite their pretensions to objectivity, haven't been particularly honest at any time in their history. Even in WWII, the war correspondents left out more than they said, and that was probably the height of objectivity in the news. Heck, the news media was in great part responsible for fomenting the Spanish-American War (google "yellow journalism"), reported the propaganda of Saddam Hussein as news in order to maintain access, and spent years trying to talk us into a recession (note the tone of economic reporting under Bush vs. that under Obama, and compare that to the actual statistics).
In other words, the real requirement we have is not to shut off the flows of information, or even to tilt at the windmill of trying to ensure that all the information we have access to is truthful, but to armor ourselves with scepticism, basic statistical knowledge, and deep historical knowledge so that we, individually, can sort out the truth from the lies, distortions and agenda-driven propaganda we are faced with.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
The last decent presidential speech writer was Peggy Noonan
While her WSJ editorials are often riddled with religious crap, she was a hell of a speech writer for Reagan.
"His name was James Damore."
Double plus good.
I agree with him on this one. Sort of...
We are getting distracted by disinformation from bloggers who crave web hits over actual journalism. We also don't place enough value on actual journalists (you know the trained professions) who go out in the field and research the report, and their editors who fact check the story (*cough*) before it is placed on the web or in print.
We live in an echo chamber. Where if it's linked by three bloggers then it must be true. Where if it's similar to what you wish were true then it must be true.
My only beef is that he didn't mind the unsubstantiated "information" that benefited his position and allowed him to win an election with nothing more than a "Yes We Can" slogan.
Live by the tweets and blogs, die by the tweets and blogs...
I think it would be more accurate to say that we are distracted by technology (games, tweets, etc.) instead of actually trying to learn something... Really, how many teenagers are actually using technology to learn something beneficial? Really?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I'm assuming you've read 1984?
This is /. so no, I haven't read anything except the summary of that book, and quite frankly, I'm going to have say I was quite disappointed that it was nothing like the Apple ad it was based on. Go figure.
Information overload is killing us and our productivity. All the electronic gadgets and communication in the workplace keep us from getting our jobs done and are causing enormous stress (which is shortening our lives).
http://www.cio.com/article/169200/Information_Overload_Is_Killing_You_and_Your_Productivity
"The report ("The 'Too Much Information' Age: What CIOs Can Do About It") cites Accenture research that demonstrates the deluge and resulting confusion: 42 percent of IT managers complain that they are bombarded by too much information; 39 percent say they can't figure out which information is current; 38 percent say they need to weed out duplicate information; and 21 percent say they don't understand the value of the information they do receive. "
Googling shows lots more links for - Information Overload Productivity
Why do I never have mod point when I really need them?
YMMD!
I wish they would start a department of truth in the government to tell me what I should be thinking.
I'm assuming you've read 1984?
He was about to pick up a copy, but a big "whoosh" of air came out of nowhere and blew it away.
Since your comment only pretends to be about information but really is about brown people, I think it exemplifies perfectly how information becomes distraction.
Never trust them (those in power) even if we elected them to CHANGE our system.
They hate these new devices because they don't control them yet. Look at totalitarian states all around the world, all politicians' DREAMLANDS because they control every facet of information and the minutiae of everyday lives of their subjects. I don't care if your politician is Ron Paul, Ronald Reagan, or Barack Obama. They all dreamed of a place they can control us from. That is why in our society we have to keep them in check. We have to let them know who is boss and that they are chosen to SERVE US. If they can't get over the yellow press, the "rumors" the "false information". if they can't calibrate their message to appeal to the mass of us, that is THEIR problem and not ours.
Barack Obama, your Chavez is showing. At least we know how to recognize it, we learned it in the time frame between 1763 and 1789.
Now to be down-ranked into oblivion by the enlightened leftosphere...
The Apple iPad, it doesn't burn at 451 degrees but by golly we'll figure out a way to eliminate it's subversive information delivery capability!
Oh, and BHO... The Xbox is an entertainment platform. Maybe the Whitehouse should mandate what games are played on it, like:
The Healthcare Bill: Acquiesing your personal freedoms to the bueracracy 2011. Learn how to avoid fraud detection by the Healthcare Police. Work your way up from menial claims clerk to head of the HHS, or in Death Panel mode, decide who gets the life saving operation and who doesn't!!!
Sounds like a lot of fun. maybe even more than Madden NFL 2011.
Of course what was written above is just a warning and not a foretelling of events to come.
Nice assumption, Captain Obvious.
US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.
- translation: it used to be that you got your 'news' from the government approved controlled sources such as news papers, TV, radio and such. What is happening now is that the Government cannot realistically control all of the ways people communicate anymore and it is a problem, since the diversion of the fake news is no longer the only source of 'information' that is overpowering all other sources.
"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter," Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.
- translation: there are too many difference dissenting voices that those in Power do not like you to hear and do not want you to listen to.
"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.
- translation: with all this technology, which I as a lawyer see as obstacles standing on the way of having total control of information and think needs to be regulated into oblivion but I still didn't figure a way to do so, it is hard to keep your attention on the only sources of 'information' that I approve of. Obviously it is not right that some believe that in today's America, the only reliable news-sources are satire channels where the actual truth is reported in such condescending yet pleasurable way that it attracts both, the serious people hungry for information and the more numerous general public just looking for some entertainment.
"some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,"
- translation: I am going to equate everyone who I do not approve of, so the crazy people who say I am an African born Muslim are seen in the same light, as those who say I am a corporate whore.
"All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."
- translation: Goddamnit! I can't take it anymore that people actually are aware of what the Government and specifically the White House is doing on actual issues, I can't have it, it's preposterously difficult to do one thing and pretend to do the other because you just know it, the audience can get the actual story behind the 'news'.
"We can't stop these changes... but we can adapt to them," Obama said, adding that US workers were in a battle with well-educated foreign workers.
- translation: but don't you worry, we'll get right on this problem, we'll come up with something to stop the alternative news from coming out, from information being spread in non-approved manner.
You can't handle the truth.
Back in the day (no earlier than 10ish years ago) it was far more challenging to obtain information. I'll pick a particular example: I was trying to learn how to play guitar. The only ways of doing it were either going to an instructor or buying a book (or both). Both of these represent data, not information. Data is just a bunch of stuff, information is a conclusion you draw after a careful examination of the said stuff. Further more, in smalls town like mine there were only a handful of instructors and almost no books. Therefore all all data was carefully filtered and sorted before assimilation and turning into information. Nowadays there's a plethora of ways of learning how to play the guitar, but it comes as information - "here's how you play Sweet Home Alabama, put your fingers here and here and then there and there", for instance. As kids these days are simply being given conclusions, not prerequisites, they seem to have totally lost the appetite for putting thoughts together and learning something from that. I've observed quite a few of them (I've two young cousins and my mom is a high school teacher and shares insights about her pupils), they've all exhibited the same symptoms.
It just means he knows what he's talking about.
when they are at their best they are incompetent boobs, and at worst corrupted tyrannical assholes
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
So, is his blackberry that he can't live without distracting him?
Jason-Palmer.com
And this got into slashdot? Well, Obama is right. We're receiving too much information! It's trivial knowledge, and not limited just to new technology.
There's no counter-argument in that critique. It's only some idiot trying to cause bad reputation. Zero information content.
and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views"
in obama's defense, calling talk radio and blogs as "mediums that tend to disagree with his political views" is like describing the ebola virus as "organic matter that tends to disagree with your right to live"
talk radio and political blogs are seething venomous pits of propaganda, whether from right or left, and are not valid sources of anything. nevermind the laughable idea they offer polite respectable disagreement to your political views. is a ranting lobotomized alzheimer's patient infected with rabies a "disagreement with your political views"?
mindless partisan hate (left OR right), which is all talk radio or political blogs are, is are completely useless. echo chambers for people who have turned off their minds. completely unthinking, loud, tired, endlessly rehashed pointless drivel. talk radio and political blogs are septic systems of the mind, and are not valid reactions to anything anyone says or does, whether right or left. the less talk radio you listen to and political blogs you read, indeed, the clearer your mind. reading a blatantly left wing or right wing blog probably instantly (temporarily) lowers your iq
in such a respect obama is 100% correct. if gw bush said the same thing, he would be correct to. because it doesn't matter the source of the observation, because the observation is not an attack on the right or the left. if osama bin laden told you it is important to wash your hands after using the toilet, does the source of that observation make the statement immediately suspect? no: its important to wash your hands after leaving the toilet, even osama bin laden recognizes this. therefore, it is equally true what obama says about talk radio and political blogs, whether said by him or sarah palin about left wing blogs. left OR right wing: talk radio and political blogs are poison to the mind
so obama's observation is completely valid. talk radio and political blogs are not coherent sources of impartial information. talk radio and political blogs are mental filth and they destroy civil society by turning it into a race to the bottom of mindless attacks and smears
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Clearly, he has plenty of time to piss and moan about what people choose to do with their leisure time, and it's much more important to lecture us on that rather than focus on the oil spill in the gulf, or the wars overseas, or our hemmhoraging job market, or any other less important thing in this country.
This, coming from a guy hooked on a Crackberry.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
They already do, it's called national media.
"Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views."
What is this bullshit? Sounds like someone's still bitter about losing the election.
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
"Brown people"?
Your racism is showing...
Didn't Obama announce his VP candidate via Twitter first? Probably leaving thousands of bloggers and newsrooms constantly refreshing their feeds?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
... refused to give up his Crackberry upon entering office.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Seeing as how this was a graduation speech, apparently these particular kids weren't too "distracted".
Maybe this would have been a better speech to give to kids in detention or summer school...
And this is all from the man who forced the NSA to come up with a way for him to keep his Blackberry? Isn't that the ultimate form of being constantly connected?
Actually, I was referring to yours, with your protesting against the description of the Times Square bomb guy being described as a "40 year old white male", as if a Taliban can't be white-skinned.
Couldn't agree more. It's impossible to find unbiased news on TV anymore. Whatever happened to accurate coverage, and when did Mainstream media decide to only cover stories that favor their side?
My gadgets serve their purpose. If I choose to "waste" time, that's my problem. If I didn't have a gadget to distract me, I would find something else to distract me. Often times, when I'm stumped and knee deep in code...a good distraction jars loose the best ideas of the day/night. I wouldn't expect a politician to understand that though.
I agree with you that we have allowed the internet and entertainment media to distract us from our daily lives, but I believe that this is only half the problem posed by entertainment & informational technology.
The other half of the problem, as Obama perhaps tried to allude to but didn't quite fully specify, is that when we permit ourselves to be overloaded with information, but lack the expertise to evaluate its validity and worth, we are easily manipulated by lies, half-truths, and biased points-of-view. That's why we need news and media experts to help sort, highlight, and evaluate the information that we lack the expertise to do ourselves; they help identify for us what is important.
Think of it like Antique Road Show without the experts. Information is like the stuff that we collect in our attics. We need content experts to help us understand and recognize the value of what we possess, as well as convince us to throw away the things that aren't worth anything. Without the experts, we become informational pack rats; we possess everything, but know the value of nothing.
And when ignoramuses start to throw around information that they don't understand, we aren't empowered; we're misled.
The other problem I am becoming more concerned about is people building bubbles of information and opion which does not include outside POVs.
What I mean is that people read blogs, watch TV shows etc., which only serve to reinforce their current world view. Whether that be to the left or right in the political spectrum. Or opinions on scientific research, or religious groups.
Recently I went to a precinct meeting of my $PoliticalPartyofMyChoice. I then volunteered to serve as a delegate to the county caucus. In this situation I was forced meet with, in real life, people I did not agree with. Even in the same political party there can a wide variety of points of view, biases, misinformation, lack of good information, undiscussed issues of concern to you etc. Speaking to people face to face without the shroud of the internet forced me to think about things and review some of my biases and positions. I had argue (in the classical sense of the word, as in "to debate") some of my points and allow myself to be educated.
It was actually was a good experience due to that. I would recommend it. Put down the iPad and XBox, get out of the house, and get involved face-to-face.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I recently moved to a place where the quality of dialup I had in 1991 is considered broadband. Occasionally a text gets through on my iphone but I can't hold a normal call. I have a verizon 3g card but it drops connection when I get up for coffee. There is no cable TV or broadband service. I have to drive 3 miles to get out of the valley I live in to get cell phone service with AT&T which will allow me to place a call and finish it.
I've never felt more alive.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
But Apple said 1984 won't be like 1984.
I find it pretty hilarious that the responses to this topic basically prove him right. People didn't read the article, nor the speech, they just responded with their own political bent, conspiracy theories or a knee jerk reaction that all the distraction is good.
Can you imagine any kind of protest on a college campus these days that would push for real reform? No, everyone's checking the facebook or watching videos.
What's that over there? Something shiny?
Whoever wrote that summary needs a hard kick in the head and a ban from Slashdot, shit like "Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views." should stay in troll comments not on the front page.
This /. article could have been a good discussion about information and its possible overload on human connectedness, in the sense of getting important news/information, how to filter through it and avoiding extreme views.
But thanks to the troll summary we get none of that, just extreme views, people who pretend to know what Obama is thinking and discussions that have almost no connection to what he really said. Basically falling into the trap he and others before him have warned about.
If I didn't know better I would think I was reading a Fox news forum.
Did you see any pics of the guy? No? Sorry, but they were off by a decade and if you want to claim that the picture made it so he could be mistaken for something other than what he is, then the video is too grainy and distorted to be useful.
The point was, the description was off-base, and it was off-base on wishful thinking from certain media personalities and Obama administration officials who were hoping to tie the situation to "anti-Obama sentiment."
Well, considering the mountains of lies and obfuscation coming out of Obama's mouth, his press secretary's mouth and other mouth pieces of his administration, he is an authority on the subject of "unreliable sources".
How about that report that our Health and Human Services Secretary sat on that showed the health care bill was going to cost more than was being promoted? Just one of many instances of bull crap coming out of those in power in Washington D.C. (note: I include Democrats and Republicans in this, they are both equally responsible for the current mess this country is in).
This is why I sympathize with Obama. I know exactly what it's like to have people over-parse and over-analyze your words, when they'd just understand if they had some common sense. For fuck sake, he's making a flowery commencement speech, not policy.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
He's proven himself to be a liar and is just another cog in the system,
as were the last few dummies in the White House.
I voted for Obama, but I sure as hell won't make that mistake again.
Fuck him.
Maybe he is just concerned about the up coming trend to writing doctorate theses in lolcat.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Hey douche bag Obama said the problem is when "information becomes a distraction...rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation."
Do you get the point. It's the same problem parents have been complaining about for the past 40 years! First it was TV, then Video Games, and now it's the Internet. All forms of distraction. People read less and pay less attention to the world around them.
Moron
All of the comments he makes can be applied just as easily to television, books, periodicals, radio, and film. All this is, is Obama demonstrating the Douglas Adams rules of technology acceptance
Maybe he's talking about Information Overload which is indeed a problem.
Think about those managers that are completelly Blackberry driven (those that almost always give the highest priority to their BB, even in meetings) and now consider the quality of their decision making: for people that get so many e-mails and are so on top of things, they usually are surprisingly uninformed and unthinking in their decisions.
Maybe Obama's statements should be read as:
- President of the USA says that nowadays people have too many things pulling their attention and receive too much low-value information
and that has negative consequences with regards to their knowledge and wisdom.
instead of:
- Well know Democrat politician tells people what they're doing wrong.
You know, even though he's the lider of a political party in a highly politically polarised nation, he's still the fucking president of the US of A and he didn't got there by being stupid. Maybe he's capable of an informed opinion ...
<RANT>
It pisses me off to no end that me, an European, have to be then one pointing out the he's a man that has succeeded in getting elected to a highly coveted position, which few can achieve and that maybe his non-political opinions, at least once in a while, should be heard instead of dismissed outright because of his political affiliation
</RANT>
Then he should make a flowery commencement speech, not a campaign stump speech. Or do you disagree?
Since none of you read the speech, let alone the article, here's a handy link to the text of the speech. AGAIN. The AP took 2 lines from it, and ran a story based on that.
http://www.buzzstation.net/2010/05/obama-michigan-graduation-speech.html
If I had any mod points I'd bump you up. The parent does exactly what Obama complained about: he takes a politically neutral subject and contorts it in such a way that "information overload" all of a sudden becomes "liberal media conspiracy." Gotta love how he insinuated that the evil liberal media was in cahoots with the terrorists. He really exposed himself with "Taliban-type attack." He probably meant Al-Qaida, but they're all brown, so what's it matter?
Gotta love how he claims that you can use statistics to lie and spread misinformation. You don't have to use statistics. Accusing the media of conspiracy for not covering certain stories more in depth is so logically absurd that he must be intending on spreading misinformation himself. There's a much easier explanation: incompetence. But not on the media's part, on the part of the reader base. People care more about stories about Pandas having sex than they do about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict so the media invests more time and money covering Panda stories. The BBC, which tends to support Obama more than most American media outlets, actually does cover stories such as Oslo more in depth rather than just gloss over them. This seems to indicate that the ineptitude of the American media probably has more to do with our culture than some conspiracy between Obama, terrorists, and Ted Turner.
The fact of the matter is that if you get your daily news from Sarah Palin or Ariana Huffington's blog, you're not getting reliable information. The internet is full of unreliable information from all angles of the political spectrum, so it's doubtful that Obama was seeking to silence political opposition with these comments.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
People know when they're wasting time playing too many games and browsing too many blogs. Obama is just encouraging the graduates to do something with their lives instead of frittering them away. For some crazy reason a lot of people in here find that threatening, can't imagine why.
// sammy baby liked this.
...that he advertised/campaigned using virtual ads in video games. I guess he didn't feel that they were a diversion if it helped him get into office.
Just like Aldous Huxley said it would be.
If your breath didn't smell like death, I would kill you with a machete, fire ant hill, and gasoline and a lighter. However, since your breath is terrible, I will blow you up with the said Hindenburg. Amen.
If I were you, I would commit suicide by dousing myself in gasoline or AA jet fuel and lighting it. Just sayin'!
you don't even try to appeal to moderation. and you in fact deny me the right to moderation. you will only see my words as leftist. you insist everything is right or left. and you in fact attack me in a contrived way based on my sig, creatively reasoning and inferring my radical leftyism. the only way your mind will process is my words is as "the enemy"
in other words, you are a hopeless partisan, and you are what is wrong with this country, right or left
i am a moderate. i really am. but since you won't see my statement as a moderate one, since you insist what i say has to be partisan (the limitation that defines your perception of reality does not define my reality, or any reality, darling) i guess i'll just have to go back to my communist muslim socialist fascist president's feet then, i have a lot of dick sucking to do in the name of emperor palpatine. right?
zzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Obama is just encouraging the graduates to do something with their lives instead of twittering them away."
Fixed that for you.
JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
This is weird coming from a gadget freak, but people really are bomarded by way too much information at once. I can think of a lot of examples:
I'm not some Luddite who thinks we need to go back in time - we just need to learn as a society when to turn down the huge amount of noise coming in. Some noise is good, but when it means you can't sit still for 20 seconds, something has gotten out of whack.
You're calling a mosque that was built in AD 685 a "squatters' mosque" and you HONESTLY expect people to think you are a reliable source of information?
I'm sorry, but email addiction is just as bad as playing too many games, and in many cases, they are completely oblivious to the fact that they completely ignore the people in front of them for said device.
And I'm sure that he was checking up on news and various other things on the Blackberry as well. Oh wait, that's right, everyone that has a smartphone has one to only make and receive calls.
Can you imagine any kind of protest on a college campus these days that would push for real reform?
No, I can't.
Because when the last generation conducted mass protests, they got exactly what they didn't want out of it in response. Simply put, they didn't work.
...the original article does have a point about most people's definition of an "unreliable source" being "a source I don't agree with."
.
Bullshit.
Please define "most people", and cite your references.
It is damned easy to throw out blanket statements like this, especially when they have a kind of seductive way of prompting us to shrug and say, "Well, that makes sense." It is somewhat harder to actually think about what is being said. The strong implication is that all "sources" are reliable and we discount those we disagree with as un-reliable simply because we disagree with them. "Talk radio" is demonstrably unreliable as a source of information. And why should it be otherwise? It's an entertainment medium, designed to sell commercials, and nothing more. The fact that I disagree with him 99% of the time doesn't change the fact that Glenn Beck is fountain of nonsense 99% of the time. But I don't lose any sleep over Beck selling commercials to those willing to support his goofy show. I most certainly do lose sleep over the fact that there are a lot of people out there who think that Glenn is any kind of credible information source.
What all this has to do with iPads and whatnot, I don't really get, but I have a strong suspicion that some speech writer was trying to make the prez look a little less threatening (i.e. not "young and radical") to the demographic group that historically has trouble coping with changes... like "...all them new-fangled information gadgets".
And you know this because ... ??? No, you don't know at all, but make things up to suit your evident anti-Muslim agenda.
At least one photo of the bomber was released before he was caught. It was vague and grainy, and there's no chance that it was the best picture of him from a place so full of surveillance cameras as Times Square. So why did the police release only useless photos to the press? In the hope that he wasn't caught, so that the Obama administration could blame whitey, or perhaps rather because the police wanted to catch a possibly dangerous terrorist without public interference, and without suspicion heaped on every somewhat Semitic-looking American?
There are certain people for whom much of what THEY say YOU should do, does not apply to THEM. He is one of THOSE people.
Frankly, he is welcome to his opinion, and may even be right, on this issue. In a sane world I would just say, So what?
Unfortunately he is in a position to "do something" about it.
And if being a "distraction" isn't enough, soon you'll hear "all those electronic devices aren't good for the environment"...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Get ready Americans.
Just wait and you will see... you voted for this wolf disguised with a sheep's skin.
He is the Taliban Ambassador in the West.
Just wait...
that you are trolling me or trying to make a joke
no hate in talk radio or political blogs?
i will file you mentally as an attempt at humor, but you never know these days. there really are people out there who think there is no hate in talk radio or political blogs. so even if you are joking as i hope you are, please note that your joke is more tragic than comic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well let's see:
First of all, "built in AD 685"? No such claim can be made - even Muslim "scholars" argue over the building timeframe.
Second of all, "AD 685" is more than 50 years after Mohammed's (ptooie) death, and the Umayyid dynasty's construction of a Mosque and structures called "the farthest", in reference to an obscure koranic line that has no basis to refer to any physical location on earth... yeah. We're talking not about a "holy site of Islam" here, but the equivalent of those "Jesusland" theme parks that occasionally pop up in the southern US by nutbag christians.
I know its history, so I call it what it is: a joke. Any Muslim who goes there to "worship" is praying to the almighty coin, nothing more.
Couldn't agree more. It's impossible to find unbiased news on TV anymore. Whatever happened to accurate coverage, and when did Mainstream media decide to only cover stories that favor their side?
Unbiased news never existed. It's only recently that we have opposing views in media that expose the bias. When all the media is saying the same thing, bias is harder to spot. It gets accepted as truth by default. Since we now have differing views on different channels, we can compare them and the bias becomes obvious.
Getting the same story from different views is a good thing. I've learned that the other side is not evil. They want the same thing I do. They just have a different idea as to how to get there.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
This is why I sympathize with Obama. I know exactly what it's like to have people over-parse and over-analyze your words, when they'd just understand if they had some common sense. For fuck sake, he's making a flowery commencement speech, not policy.
You must have loved Bush!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
So, Obama, you don't like the informedness level of the public dialog? Hmmm, let's see -- is there anything that the most powerful person in the world could do about that? What say you fix the problem, instead of just whining?
See, the thing is I agree with the problem. The public dialog is shallow and vitriolic. But guess what? That is because of the way your party and the other big party approach winning elections. You are the ones who are encouraging shallow, vitriolic discourse.
The solution is not to tell us to change. The solution is for you to change. Here's a few suggestions:
1. Stop talking about your policies as if they are pure wins. Every bit of public policy has a pro and a con. Talk about the costs of copyright enforcement, or the anguish of collateral damage once in a while.
2. Stop talking about the enemy's policies as if they were pure evil. Every bit of public policy that is credibly advocated has some upside. And I'm not talking about damning with faint praise here -- show me you are really cognizant of the benefits your enemies are seeking.
3. Stop talking about just the effects. Every politician loves to tell me about the outcome of some proposed new law. Try encouraging a public dialog about the forces with which a law will interact. Encourage us to discuss and contemplate the causes for law, and various potential solutions.
4. Open the government, so we don't have to feed on punditry and news angertainment. Set up forums and participate in them. Take our views seriously. Remember you are our servant, you're supposed to be listening to us even if you think you are smarter than us (something I can completely understand -- I think I'm smarter than us too).
5. Use your spin powers for good. Washington DC is awash in flacks whose job is to make people think and act in certain ways. Take five people from your socio-manipulation staff and task them with whipping the public into a maelstrom of civic participation.
6. Find the common ground. Don't just pander to the base with the above. Right-wing people are just as pissed off with their party as lefties are with yours. Most of us on both sides are actually deeply patriotic people who would love to be united on a few things. Work with that.
7. Stop using the simple stuff for unification. Yes, yes, we all hate terr'rists and we all think health care is too expensive and we all wish the deficit were lower and we all (except about 20% of us that you seem to enjoy pissing off) love jesus or similar mystical being. Yawn. Meaningless. How about some of the principles that we cleave to? A little fire and brimstone passion for liberty(*)? Maybe some of the best bits of the free market like "an informed consumer"? How about getting us excited about the more subtle (and more bedrock) things that make America work?
In short, stop telling us what to think and start leading us to think.
The President whining that the public dialog is too shallow and divisive? Un-fucking-believable. It is significantly your fault, and there is not one single person on the planet with more power to fix it.
And ferfucksake don't give me that "I'm too busy being President" crap. Fuck that. Put everything else on hold until we fix the public discourse. It is the number one most dangerous thing we face. Like the Taliban times ten. If we don't fix how we make decisions, then making one or two correct decisions because you work real hard on them won't make a damned bit of difference.
* including liberty from government, not just liberty through government
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
/wishingihadmodpoints
"Just as bad?" Really? Too much of my job consists of email, and somehow I don't think it fly if I switched all that time over to playing video games. Love him or hate him, but do you honestly think Obama would be President Obama today if all the time he spent on the blackberry he'd instead spent playing XBox? Really now.
I do think Obama's remarks could have just as easily included other time sinks, such as TV. But apparently the Obamas do have an opinion about that too: "Like any family, the Obamas have their TV rules. The kids get to watch only on weekends."
moaning about Obama? At least you lot have GOT a head of Government at the moment.
Please get psychological help in seeing past the color of your own nose. Thanks.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is hard. What is the whole truth?
The UK recently had a telling case. A BNP politician (racist party) was canvasing and a fight broke out. On Have I Got News For You (British political comedy show) they showed the footage. The guy punched a dark skinned (probably Muslim immigrant but that would from that footage have been a presumption) in the face. Oooh bad. What they didn't show is the few seconds before that, when that guy spitted in his face.
Careful editing to show the BNP in a bad light? The BBC is famously anti-racist and no, this is NOT a good thing. The BBC is supposed, especially in election times, to be impartial and give equal time to ALL parties, including those they disagree with. This is important, after all the BBC which controls the state TV, is the state TV, could ruin any party that has in its agenda say the end of the BBC.
What makes it clear the Hignfy cast has an agenda other then fair and equal treatment of all parties is that when Prescott (labour) punched a guy who threw an egg at him, the cast pretty much applauded it. So it is okay to punch a white protester who attacks you, but not a Muslim? Talk about bias. You might agree with the bias, but it is still bias.
And that really is the problem with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The have shown the whole incident you would have had to basically spend 5 or more minutes in a comedy show to explain the full setting. Why did the argument start? Democracy calls on parties you don't like being allowed to take part in the protest. On the other hand, demonstrating against points of view you don't like is also part of it. Spitting on people is aggresive and you should expect to be punched, but if you are calling a person a waste because of his race you can hardly expect him not to react.
The problem is that how many people saw the incident only in the comedy show and not the full clip? Their point of view has now been altered by people with an agenda even if that agenda was only to get a laugh. And this is what we know about, how much else has ended up on the cutting floor of the news room? Maybe all the footage that showed the exact same ambulance in the middle east? Or the same childs body killed in different locations? How odd that was only found out later, not by the camera crew who after all had a close up look. Agenda or lousy reporting standards? And of course, I am now convinced these cases were wrong, and therefor all news from certain points of view is suspect so I now rather believe less official resources as well.
I am not suprised Obama is getting upset with all the crap "news" out there. Come on US, when you hear people claim about nazi death camps if healthcare reform is enabled, why don't you shoot the people claiming it for insulting your intelligence. Most countries in the world have social health care and no dead squads yet killing little timmy. In fact the most recent case of extreme medical behavior came from the US, where children in orphanages are forced to take part in medical experiments. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34817839637
Capitalists doing exactly what the nazi's did. Gosh, how could that be! This is what the Tea Party wants to be done to children, rather then allow anyone regardless of income to have medical care.
Truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And if you read any of this, how do you know any of which I tell you is the truth. I linked to facebook for a reason. If you want to check it, it will take you some effort. In fact to check all the claims in this post and the parent, you will have to do some digging. They are "true", but how do you know?
The press is the gatekeeper of democracy. If it starts to fail, democracy will soon follow. That boring paper with no page three girl that has boring headlines is the bastion of freedom. If all news becomes fox news or the daily mail, then the end of democracy isn't far away. And if twitter becomes the source of news we might as well kiss our asses goodbye.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yea..... Get back to me when he, actually, says something like that. Until then, I'm using my freedom of speech to suggest that you're paranoid.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
What else are we meant to do with our lives? Just eat, work and sleep?
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Aren't they pretty much the same thing? Talk is cheap, and when you're smart sometimes it's hard to word things perfectly for the obsessive-compulsive crowd who doesn't understand your hand waving and generalizations.
Just like people take sound bytes of Obama and say "OMG HE'S A COMMUNIST!" this is no different. Unless policy changes arise from this, I don't really care. What he's saying is generally intelligent and has some merits, but nitpicking about specific points is just asinine. When he's making a graduation speech, he doesn't need to dot his I's and cross his T's just because some people can't look past the words and get to the sentiment.
And to the poster below who thinks I loved Bush: no. That's a false conjecture, though I gave him his benefits of the doubt as well. I voted for neither Bush nor Obama (yet).
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Please prove this:
The point was, the description was off-base, and it was off-base on wishful thinking from certain media personalities and Obama administration officials who were hoping to tie the situation to "anti-Obama sentiment."
If you didn't make it up, you should be able to dig up a source or at least some credible evidence for the truth of your statement. That's got nothing to do with my psychology, nor with the colour of my nose.
Some right wing tea-partying wingnut told me Obama had no interest in Jobs. I guess he was right. Sorry Steve.
Not threatening. It's more like "are you my mommy?" Or as we say around here to things like that "!*&$ off, nanny."
Love him or hate him, but do you honestly think Obama would be President Obama today if all the time he spent on the blackberry he'd instead spent playing XBox?
Well, using cocaine didn't stop him or his predecessor, why would the Xbox?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yes, exactly.
As Mark Twain put it, a lie could be half-way around the world before the truth could put its boots on--and that was before the internet. Now we have internet echo chambers where the ignorant can stay ignorant with the help of other fools, some of whom make a living at being fools, and where, if you just stay within the limits of the circle-jerk, you need never encounter an idea or piece of evidence that challenges your views.
Oh please government control more aspects of my life, including the distractions I choose to own.
when it comes from Obama's teleprompter
more like a paperweight!
ITT: Butthurt nerds
The UK recently had a telling case. A BNP politician (racist party) was canvasing and a fight broke out. On Have I Got News For You (British political comedy show) they showed the footage. The guy punched a dark skinned (probably Muslim immigrant but that would from that footage have been a presumption) in the face. Oooh bad. What they didn't show is the few seconds before that, when that guy spitted in his face.
Taking things out of context for humorous purposes is a pretty common technique. Did the _actual_ BBC news not show to entire sequences of events ?
Your hackery gets modded as insightful? Really?
blah blah blah comparing Obama to a cult figure blah blah blah
What a load. Its embarrassing how stupid the people on this site are.
it happened right under our noses and we missed the chance to study the phenomenon? time goes by so fast..
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I think he's right. We saturate ourselves with information out of novelty and convenience, in awe of our own ingenuity, and rather than being drawn together by the commonality it can present, we are instead pushed further apart, becoming our own little islands, a nation of archipelagos rather than a united landmass. It's less the technology itself and more the attitude and culture it creates, of presenting artificial veneers to the world which other artificial veneers ooh and ahh at so others will ooh and ahh at theirs.
I'm reminded of the lampoon that the animated film WALL-E presented. A whole ship of fat lumps all running around on self-propelled chairs, never actually interacting with anyone flesh-to-flesh. Or the artificial world presented in the movie Surrogates.
He also mentioned iPads. Those aren't game consoles. He's a hypocrite.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yeah that big whoosh of air came all the way from the Amazon... the book just disappeared.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
In other words, Obama starts debates on important topics he knows he doesn't know everything about. He even admitted so in said speech.
The fact that people are now debating the purpose of information technology in our lives is a good thing.
But misinterpreting the spark that started the debate is what annoys me. Steering the discussion toward what a Luddite he is, or how ridiculous the idea is, completely misses the point.
Sometimes people talk out loud and air their ideas just so they can refine them and make them better. Being someone who does that often, I find that to be a good thing. I think it's good to challenge your own ideas and to not commit fully until you understand the nuances better.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
My job also consists of a lot of email, but some of us realize that email is just as much a distraction as it is a tool. I have seen too many people that sit in a meeting, and are so involved in their emails that they completely ignore the conversations going on in which they are there to be involved in. Yes, email is a tool, and a very handy one at that, but is not a replacement for actually interacting with someone.
I am not saying that the Blackberry is on the same level as an XBox, but that it is as much of a distraction to the user as it is an annoyance and distraction to anyone who is forced to wait for the imaginary friend on the other side of the email, before being able to continue a real-world interaction. Which, sounds a bit like, according to him,a point where "information becomes a distraction." He is speaking of not just games, but the overload of information, both good and bad.
I just find it funny, seeing as he was the one who wouldn't give up his Blackberry...
This was my first reaction. This is the guy who cost who knows how much to have special "secure" Blackberries developed so that he could keep in touch with his friends, since the White House doesn't have any meaning means of communications like e-mail, phones, cell phones, secure lines, satellite phones, military band, live satellite links, etc.
And c'mon, how can you start a critique of anything by saying "I don't know how this works, but it's bad"? How is reading a CNN.com article on an iPad or iPhone any worse than reading it on a computer or a Blackberry? And is anyone really getting their news or opinion on their Xbox?
Right. An XBox is harmless entertainment, whereas a Blackberry is digital crack.
As a 35 year old computer scientist, spending my career on distributed computing, I certainly appreciate the potential of ubiquitous communication and information processing. And I've also gone through my own reactionary phase where I had to learn how to shut off the email "information flow" and recover my balance, in the years when the chattering classes of the Internet were still inhabiting email lists and usenet. Having been raised and educated in Berkeley, CA, I also have had a steady exposure to activism over my life.
What Obama said is perhaps elitist, but makes perfect sense at a commencement exercise for educated young people. People have limited attention and intellectual capacity; deep learning, thought, and contemplation cannot be achieved when embedded in the constant chatter of the gossip circuit. To live up to your potential, you must find the time to develop your mind and do something with information you have received. The distraction of these devices is that they are often abused for instant gratification, for what is essentially passive entertainment where you just press the "feels good" button over and over.
Here is the elitist part. If an entire generation get stuck in the addictive phase of this technology, we could lose a generation of thought leaders. Perhaps we need to rescue those leaders, if they are not self-rescuing already. It is less clear whether it matters for the rest of the population, who were already enslaved to other forms of media and spent much of their lives in passive mode when it was just neighborhood or factory gossip, then when it was newsprint, then when it was radio, and then when it was TV... Obama is calling out a few bright sparks to emancipate themselves and develop their potential.
What is alarming is that so many people are willfully submitting themselves to a new, handheld form of the same dystopia depicted in the classic film Metropolis. But they've convinced themselves it's a revolution rather than a subjugation. They may spend their lives pushing buttons and dragging icons instead of pulling levers, but with the same frantic pace which strips away their humanity.
You can have my XBox when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
From the article:
OK... let's see what he's said about the Cambridge police: "I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played," yet he claimed the police "acted stupidly." Let's also look at how he saw the Arizona immigration law: "Now, suddenly, if you don't have your papers, and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you're going to get harassed -- that's something that could potentially happen". Well, the immigration law specifically PROHIBITS stopping anyone based on skin color. I don't think the Arizona law is the way to go either-- but that's because border enforcement is the Federal government's right according to the Constitution, so we need to use legal means of getting them to stop shirking their responsibility.
In short, I think the President should have that knee-jerking problem looked at by a doctor-- I hear he has a great health plan.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
TL, DR;
Exactly. In this case, Obama is kind of the blind squirrel that still found the acorn. He doesn't understand a lot of the technology, but any president of the US understands information overload. It's part of the job description.
1) There are so many devices and information sources available to everyone nowadays that information overload is a very easy trap to fall into.
2) People get stressed out by information overload.
3) As a result of the stress, people attempt to cope by letting their brains filter information and by multi-tasking.
4) Some of that filtering and multi-tasking isn't appropriate, For example, letting your political (Kool-Aid drinkers) or technological (fan-bois) preferences blind you to reality, or texting while driving.
Prez was just reminding folks that another way to deal with information overload is to just disconnect from the flow for a while. Doing that will make it easier to look at how you process information, assuming you're that self-analytical.
We are the 198 proof..
I follow /. pretty faithfully. You have to admit seeing Troll marked comments which are not. I wouldn't say "most" nor do I have numbers on ratios, but it happens. The GP simply takes this outside of /..
Seriously. I'd much rather have a president who used cocaine and lied about it...
Excellent point. He hears what his staff says about the blogs and the Internets and gets his nuts in a knot over it. This is who we're told his the most social media savvy president ever! What lies beneath is that his staff probably does all the social media work for him, of course, I know but don't say HE'S the savvy one. But yes, this sounded very much elitist and frankly like an attempt to keep people FROM social media because that's where dissent is coming from. "They don't like me out there! But I thought you all liked me!? I mean, even Simon said I could go to Hollywood!"
"A source close to the selection process said a central element in Obama's choice was Kagan's reputation for bringing together people of competing views and earning their respect. "
Sad that this kind of crap is an issue. How about finding someone that will honor and defend the constitution
I don't really care one way or the other as long as they aren't using while in office. I do wish they'd be less hypocritical about it though. A decent number of politicians are honest enough to admit they've used recreational drugs (and probably a larger number still have used them but refuse to admit it) yet they continue to support the failure known as the War on Drugs.
Do as I say, not as I do.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Can you imagine any kind of protest on a college campus these days that would push for real reform? No, everyone's checking the facebook or watching videos.
The revolution will not be televised.
Squirrel!
you can have too many toys...
iPud denounces iPAD, iPhone, and IPOD Touch
Film at eleven
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
I don't have time to go back and find it, but it's already been studied and proven for you, smart guy. In fact, it's also been studied and shown that liberals are LESS LIKELY to listen to sources that they disagree with than conservatives. The jist of the first study I mentioned was that if you gave someone two pieces of information from the same exact source, but only one of which they agreed with, they would typically believe the information that matched their bias, and disregard the information that they did not agree with. Again. THIS HAS BEEN STUDIED AND DEMONSTRATED.
You realize that you prove the point, don't you, when you rant about and that unreliability of, and borderline demonize, the sources that you disagree with, but have not a single cross word for major media outlets that have been repeatedly caught lying to the public to back their own agenda? Typical of those who have no desire to debate, but only to preach and be listened to.
and then maybe the Obama's plan is to hire tens or hundreds of thousands of people just to flood the Internet with their presence and to DDOS somehow various channels where the information just maybe is capable of sipping through, who knows who is the moderator today.
You can't handle the truth.
Please prove this:
The point was, the description was off-base, and it was off-base on wishful thinking from certain media personalities and Obama administration officials who were hoping to tie the situation to "anti-Obama sentiment."
If you didn't make it up, you should be able to dig up a source or at least some credible evidence for the truth of your statement.
It seems that this may support the previous poster's statement about wishful thinking on the part of media personalities:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/05/04/msnbc_anchor_hoped_ny_bomber_had_no_ties_to_islamic_country.html
Contessa Brewer - MS-NBC
"I mean the thing is that -- and I get frustrated and there was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country because there are a lot of people who want to use this terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry."
But they are forming these ridiculous "Let's get 1 million people to support/oppose X" groups, which are promptly ignored, because you can find 1 million people to support or oppose nearly anything relevant.
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.
In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation's drug issues.
"Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country."
Maybe because morons like your self equate anything thats not "sit in front of the tv and drool" as a waste of your life.
soon you'll hear "all those electronic devices aren't good for the environment"...
Sooner than you think.. They already took the lead out of our solder, the PCBs out of our oils.. Next they'll be telling us no more silicon.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The truth might be slower than a lie; but technology makes *us* as fast as we want to be.
Lies come to us, but finding the truth has never been easier, if we want to look.
No, according to the summary Obama is just mad that people disagree with him. I don't know who this Mark Twain guy is but I couldn't find him on facebook to call him an idiot. Who is so dumb they can't even put their boots on? Whatevs BBL
Firstly, I don't know why people are so offended because he used the iPad as an example of a device used for entertainment.
Secondly, I don't know why we all pretend to be so high and mighty all the time. I will be honest, if I ever take my computer to class, it's because it is a boring class, and I need entertainment to stay awake. I observe over half of the classroom doing the EXACT same thing.
Obama is right, there are a lot of distractions in this technological age. He was almost congratulating them for being focused.
Obama's political opponents flourish in certain media. So it's in his best interest (while being rather divorced from honesty and reality) for him to call them names and tar them as "unreliable."
There is nothing special about Obama's political opponents that makes them benefit more from unreliable sources. At least not any more than any other group. There are plenty of groups from all sides of the aisle and every extremist position that are all benefiting from spreading inaccurate information to further their causes.
It doesn't help either that most news media has become so fast-paced and sensationalist that they don't seem to do much fact-checking themselves anymore, in their race to beat the bloggers to the punch.
Spoken like a true Crackberry addict.
"My addiction isn't bad because it doesn't prevent me from doing what I want to do. Besides, I could stop at any time if I wanted too!"
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Of course, there's a big difference between "flowery" and "inarticulate".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Good write up...
UGH!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
True but that cuts both ways neither political group in the USA wants to have their ideas challenged they just KNOW they are right and the other side WRONG there is no discourse it's a myth.
While technically the law does prohibit it, racial profiling is what is actually happening (you know, this whole "reality" thing you may have heard of). Hell, they even arrested a guy on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant because he didn't have his *birth certificate* on him. He had a CDL and everything, but that wasn't enough for the authorities.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Because one person's "frittering" is another person's life-long gratifying, technology advancing, society improving, human race evolving career.
Well said!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
And that last 1% is where he (correctly, IMHO) defends Miranda Rights for Faisal Shahzad (a US citizen), in opposition to the rantings (yes, rantings) Senator John McCain. Ref: Beck Versus McCain On Miranda Rights For Times Square Suspect
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I believe your blame is misplaced. A white guy in his 40s was seen in leaving the area and changing shirts as he left. The FBI wanted to question him as a "person of interest". They had him on a security camera. He was one of the first people they looked at, but they dismissed him as a suspect very quickly.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126565648
This was not some vast liberal conspiracy to make it look like a tea-party member did it. It was simply the 24-hour news media going crazy with a video that somehow went public.
...even an alcoholic knows excessive drinking is bad for you.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Just as bad?" Really? Too much of my job consists of email, and somehow I don't think it fly if I switched all that time over to playing video games
Different dangers. From that part you quoted it was clear which he was talking about, people answering e-mails -away- from work. I know I've been out to dinner before, checked my e-mail, and started responding before realizing that my wife came back from the bathroom and I'm being "that guy."
It's creeping into jobs that really don't need 24/7 on call response to e-mails. Mine certainly doesn't. I'm doing biology, I'm not an on-call doctor or maintaining a 24/7 computer system. Even so, many other researchers have their phones alert instantly when they get an e-mail. Not too much of a jump to think that people are going to start expecting instant responses from e-mails even though an instant response isn't needed in most cases.
I don't see that happening with games, at least not for most people, games have clearer boundaries. I'm playing a game or not playing a game. I won't get a call to start playing left 4 dead 2 in the middle of dinner (unless my friends are really drunk I guess). So yeah, I agree with GP that e-mail can be more distracting than games.
You are attempting to counter the poster's comment of unreliable source being defined as a source I don't agree with.
Your examples in your argument are that the two large sources of conservative republican rhetoric are full of shit and everyone knows it. Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are full of shit but your disagreeing with them has no bearing on your anecdotal evidence.
Can you cite references of information that Rush Limbaugh has given out on his show that are inaccurate? Some tax payer numbers or legislation that he is lying about? I can't stand Glenn Beck, but I don't think he is lying. I kind of like Rush Limbaugh and find his knowledge of politics impressive. I have never heard him lying to his audience.
The left of the political realm has always comforted themselves with a warm feeling that the rest of us are just too stupid to know what is good for us. If we listen to a proponent of conservative politics, we are by definition, fools.
I believe that you have in fact made the original poster's point for him, no?
A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding...
Still, that's not the fault of the gadgets. Mr. Obama seems to be focusing on the technology as the problem. He should emphasize personal responsibility more and try to sound less like he is blaming the gadgets themselves. It ain't my fault, the majority of people aren't bright enough to keep from being distracted.
But then, emphasizing personal responsibily really isn't his bag, is it?
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
the founding fathers were paragons of the highest virtues of western LIBERAL thought, perhaps the ultimate gifts of the enlightenment in europe, which was a liberal radical reaction to the traditional right wing cesspools of monarchical despotism and religious fundamentalism
and now, today, much as people who call themselves christians spread intolerance in the name of a man who was a prophet of tolerance, we have people like you, who treat the constitution as if it were a religious fundamentalist document. and such brittle fragile minds are the "right"
pfffffffffft
sir: the constitution and the declaration of independence were and are perhaps the most radically liberal, completely nonreligious and completely nonaristocratic statements of faith in the wisdom of the common man, in a thousand years (well, there's the magna carta) and perhaps a thousand more
what the founding fathers wrote has echoed around the world and found admiration and imitation in dozens of other governments worldwide. their notions have continued to evolve, and have helped clarify the dignity of man and elevate him out of slavery/ slaveholding status, in this country and others, and to introduce universal suffrage, the vote for women, equality for women. all liberal notions, all continuing to evolve
nothing at all like this low iq right wing notion that the constitution is like the bible or quran, dusty words to be obeyed, not thought about. that only a few closed minds have some sort of monopoly on its interpretation, and, the best part: interpretted according to reasons just as random and weak as the accusations right wingers hurl at "activist" judges. fools: there is no greater activist judge than antonin scalia... the "originalist"?! ha! now that's a good joke
the constitution is a living document, a living pact with the highest principles of man: equality and dignity for all in the eyes of their government. that you take this inexorably LIBERAL document and somehow posit it as a right-leaning document is cynical, craven, and completely intellectually dishonest. at best, you're simply confused, son: in the name of being right-winged, you've drank the kool aid and walk around holding aloft a document of pure liberalism as if it were some sort of sacred totem object
someday you should actually read the constitution and the declaration of independence and stop treating it like a religious object of veneration like the shroud of turin. in the actual words on those actual pages, in the actual thoughts of our much esteemed founding fathers: you find western liberalism, fool
hilarious
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While technically the law does prohibit it, racial profiling is what is actually happening
And how is this different from the situation before the law was passed? If you've been following the exploits of Sheriff Joe Arpaio for the past few years, you know that some jurisdictions in Arizona have been doing this for years.
The only thing the law did was take a practice that was already happening and put a little more legal force behind it. (Previously, many people suspected of being illegal immigrants were arrested for being "co-conspirators" with those who smuggled them across the border, and smuggling people into the U.S. was already a crime under Arizona law, as it is under federal law.)
Jurisdictions that were already doing this will keep doing it; those that weren't, probably won't start in earnest just because of this law.
So, if anything, the main impact of this law is to make the issue into a national one, which is bringing attention to a practice that was already happening and which some people condemn as discriminatory. If you're against the principle behind the law, isn't it better to call attention to the practice rather than to let it happen quietly under legal technicalities?
Clearly Obama wants a disconnected, uninformed, ignorant populace. All the better to force through socialism...
I don't have time to go back and find it...
Yeah. Sure. More likely, you don't want to be caught citing some Fox News "personality" as your "source". That you parrot the "liberal media bias" meme is more than telling. Thanks for playing.
And if being a "distraction" isn't enough, soon you'll hear "all those electronic devices aren't good for the environment"..
Sure, because a democrat saying something will be good for the environment is a sure-fire way to get political capital necessary to defeat a powerful economic interest group or groups. You know, kind of like how they just waved the green flag and instantly got rid of SUVs and guns?
If you actually are concerned about this, and not just spreading partisan FUD (and it is just FUD, environmental concerns catch the attention of the public for a moment but that rarely translates into actual votes when opposed to tax cuts and industrial lobbies), then you should realize two things, one: it was offhand advice for the audience that was in front of him, not a plan. Second: the only way the democrats could lose even more seats this midterm election is if they tried to take away cell phones, computers, and other things we distract ourselves with. Well, I guess that's not true, they'll find plenty of ways to let me down.
It must be awesome having a persecution complex so strong that the Imperial March from Star Wars plays in your head whenever you see Obama on TV.
I think you are wishfully thinking he has an anti-anti-anti-Muslim agenda. 87.5% of statistical measurements favor his interpretation over yours because he posted first. The laws of physics also favor the gravity of the situation. Your anti-anti-anti-anti-Muslim agenda does not hold water.
You be wacky. He was concise and summed up some points very well. Of course, your bi-ass-ed pov is going to accuse me of having an anti-anti-anti-anti-anti-Muslim agenda. Even though you have nothing to base it on. You are wrong there too. I just like to distract easily-distracted angry people who like to assume things. Nothing brings more joy to my life...
"Disclaimer: All quoted statistics are lies, damn lies and statistics. Margin of error = +/- 57% Varieties +/- 51% Flavors, 99 44/100 Pure."
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
No. Not even close. While it is true that I consider Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, et al to be largely full of shit, I could say the same about any number of "liberal" talk show hosts. We could debate all day long the degree to which this or that personality lies or at least skews the truth, but that's not the point. The point is that talk show hosts are entertainers. If you rely on them to shape your view of the world, you are a fool. And we have an alarmingly large number of fools, if Arbitron is to be believed.
Link or it didn't happen.
Let me ask you a simple question.
Can you breakdown the percentage of people here illegally by geographic origins for me without making it "racial"
NO? I didn't think so.
The problem is, when a great majority of people coming here illegally, are from one geographic region then looking for "illegals" in other areas doesn't make sense (like Wyoming).
I don't have begrudge people south of the boarder coming here at all, and if I lived in the shithole of a country like most of them coming here do, and saw the bright shining light to the north, I'd probably do everything I could to get there too!
At some level, I admire their gumption. But that doesn't negate or equalize the fact that they are breaking US laws coming here without permission.
And I find Mexico's immigration policies completely hypocritical, as they have just as bad of an immigration problem on their southern boarder as the US has on its. Yet they are telling the US not to do exactly what they are doing on their southern boarder.
So, crying racism when it is common sense is simply stupid pendanditry. And the fact that we can't continue "as is" is common sense at this point.
So, until the pro-illegal immigration folks come up with a VIABLE plan (amnesty hasn't worked), that includes Boarder control, people are going to want to do anything and everything to stop the flow of humanity coming in.
Either we are a nation of laws, or we aren't. It is against to law to come here illegally (duh!). We should be arresting those here illegally when we find them. Or we should change the laws.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I thought he was Mr."I gotta have my Black Berry".
Seriously this guy can't even avoid hypocracy and double talk on the most basic subjects. You just can't take anything he says seriously.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Let's also look at how he saw the Arizona immigration law: "Now, suddenly, if you don't have your papers, and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you're going to get harassed -- that's something that could potentially happen". Well, the immigration law specifically PROHIBITS stopping anyone based on skin color.
You're depressingly naive: http://carlosmiller.com/2010/05/06/another-american-born-citizen-jailed-in-arizona-because-her-skin-was-brown/
You can't take the sky from me...
You're surprised by this now? You haven't noticed all the Ron Paulogists and linux libertarians that swarm on every political story? (and some science now too, see climate change)
its called public school
Persians are considered white according to the US census.
Yeah it used to be the media only reported on stuff if they at least two credible, independent sources. Now they report what any idiot posts on twitter.
Maybe all the media used to say same thing because they were only reporting confirmed facts. Now that media reports opinions its a lot more diverse, but the only thing you can get from it is that opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and most of them are full of shit.
I already know that other people have different opinions from me, so just tell me the facts and stop wasting my time. I can look at twitter myself if I want to see what people's opinions are.
you know, when St. Obama gave vague feel-good speeches and didn't have to make any decisions.
so you've got nothing to say regarding his real point. just an ad-hominum attack with no evidence or any facts at all, posted and distributed on an RSS-enabled website dedicated to exactly the kind of sound-bite news blurbs we are all beginning to realize is a major problem both for our culture in general and our political discourse in particular.
Sounds like he is spot on to me.
Yeah, because interfering in how I want to live my life* definitely is a-ok.
*Intentionally left ambiguous so that it can apply to any side.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
GO BACK TO RUSSIA, COMMUNIST!
Oh, give me a fucking break.
He's talking about people mistaking using gadgets for productivity and using only single sources of news rather than actually being productive, thinking for themselves and trying to actually be informed.
He's not talking about removing the ability of anyone who dares disagree with him to speak their point, he's not talking about banning things, he's not talking about *anything* like the paranoid bullshit you seem to imagine.
Look, it's okay - I get it, you don't like the guy. That's fine. But at least, if you're not going to like him, do it for things he's *actually* said and done rather than shit you're imagining he might say or might do. It's people like you - who just decide they're going to ascribe all kinds of things to the other side(s) that are fucking up political discourse in this country.
I'll admit that I tend to lean left (and, to be honest, no mainstream US politician is nearly left enough for my tastes), but I like to think I'm at least somewhat intellectually honest. When Bush and company were in power I was just as bothered by the moonbats who were insisting that Cheney was going to stage a coup before the 2008 elections and other crazy shit like that as I am now bothered by the wingnuts who insist that Obama is actually an Atheist Muslim Socialist Fascist Do-Nothing Empty Suit Who Is Single-Handedly Ruining America By Doing Too Much.
You're certainly welcome to your paranoid delusions that he's going to go from "Hey, kids, think for yourselves" to "Chairman Obama has declared that any source of news other than MSNBC is bad for the environment" but all it's going to do is get you ignored by people who aren't insane.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Then he should make a flowery commencement speech, not a campaign stump speech. Or do you disagree?
Please quote which parts of this commencement speech you think sounded like a campaign stump speech.
but that's because border enforcement is the Federal government's right according to the Constitution
Really? The word "border" doesn't appear anywhere in that document. I would say that it's up to each individual state to protect their borders - if the fed wants to protect borders - let it wall off D.C.
It's up to the States - and then the People - to do that job.
Well, the immigration law specifically PROHIBITS stopping anyone based on skin color.
Yes, and no one has ever been stopped for Driving While Black either.
In short, I think the President should have that knee-jerking problem looked at by a doctor-- I hear he has a great health plan.
Yeah, because it's not like any of these conspiracy theories are being touted by "mainstream" Republicans:
(Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, Rush Limbaugh (now he said "environmental wackos)
Seriously. Why should anyone think of these people as legitimate? Furthermore, since these are leaders in party, why should the party be considered legitimate?
It's only recently that we have opposing views in media that expose the bias.
Really? Most major cities in the U.S. (and elsewhere) have had competing newspapers for centuries, some of which tend to be associated with liberal biases, some with conservative, some with other views. About a century ago, huge syndicates started growing that created a system where many papers nationwide were owned by the same person or corporation. It's not surprising that such mass media markets all got similar news when they were owned by the same company. Smaller independent papers couldn't compete, so we lost the diversity of news sources somewhat in the early 1900s.
Nevertheless, most major cities maintained at least two newspapers that had contrasting political viewpoints.
Since we now have differing views on different channels, we can compare them and the bias becomes obvious.
I think what you're referring to is the Fairness Doctrine, large sections of which were repealed in the 1980s. This only applied to broadcast media, and it actually required opposing viewpoints to be considered on the same channel. Of course, one of the major impacts of this rule was that extremist views tended to be avoided in broadcast media, since it was too hard to be "fair" to all extremist positions. Repeal of some provisions of this resulted in a more fragmented broadcast media with more extreme positions.
Nevertheless, the point is that this only ever applied to broadcast media. You could always have alternative newspapers with different perspectives, for example, and these have always existed.
When all the media is saying the same thing, bias is harder to spot. It gets accepted as truth by default. [...] Getting the same story from different views is a good thing.
While I agree with the basic principle here (since I too like reading the same story from different views), the majority of people seem to gravitate toward news sources that agree with their own personal biases. So, rather than educating the public in terms of a reasoned debate (which is what the "Fairness Doctrine" was supposed to do), we have a system that allows people to get their news from sources that already agree with them. People end up reinforcing their own biases, and those biases can grow stronger and more extreme.
I'm not saying we should go back to the older system, but the current system doesn't completely solve the problem you bring up -- and arguably, it tends to make the news media more fragmented and more extremist, which obviously trickles down to listeners/viewers.
You're depressingly naive: http://carlosmiller.com/2010/05/06/another-american-born-citizen-jailed-in-arizona-because-her-skin-was-brown/
Add to that the lies that the Cambridge Cop included in his report - like that he talked to 911 caller at the scene - and it sure sounds like the cop acted stupidly, new he was in the wrong and tried to cover his ass by making up a false narrative.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You have two instances in his whole life where he did this. I agree, the one with the Cambridge police he may have jumped the gun, but what had been reported so far was that the police harassed a man living in his own home. It did sound like they were stupid. As far as the immigration thing, they added crap to it after they passed it to be more strict on who can be stopped. It doesn't matter though, if you are brown and have an accent in AZ, you better watch out, because a cop can come up with any reason they want to stop you. "Oh, it looked like you were loitering.""Your tail light is out.""You were acting suspiciously." I don't really think it is knee jerk at all. Unless you are trying to claim cops follow the law.
In any case, if this is the best you can come up with, it is fairly pathetic. I mean, it isn't like he started a war with a country because he thought it had weapons even though intelligence said they didn't. Obama does stuff (extremely rarely) that snarky conservatives can make fun of. Ooh, what a terrible person.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Oooh random internet blogger says it's true! It must be true! Like that woman at the airport...she was right, right? Oohh, she wasn't? It's amazing how much word people take of a stranger writing shit on the internet.
The problem isn't the security of the communications medium, but rather the public access laws that require all forms of electronic communications coming from elected representatives (on the federal level) to be archived and published unless it represents a national security issue covered by an official state secret.
Surprisingly, a hand-written note isn't covered by this law. Go figure.
1) And politics isn't just as distracting, if not way more?
2) Fixed that for ya:
"He's basically saying we are getting too much information too quickly, and from 'unreliable sources.' This is going to be the government's excuse to start exerting excessive control over people, starting with technology"
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
I'm sure you mean pedantry, you simpleton!
You are a complete moron. If you think that his opponents (Fox News, Limbaugh, Palin, etc.) are reliable sources than you have absolutely no ability to parse truth from a narrative that is being sold to you because you want to believe that the "others" are all evil or stupid. These uneducated pundits lie on a daily basis quite obviously and you think Obana is divorced from reality. Utter stupidity on your part.
It is pretty clear you get your news from garbage sources if you think the Obama administration was pushing for this guy to be a certain skin color. They aren't going to say...reports say he is a 30 year old, arab...you are dumb enough to believe that the administration would say "no, let's say he is a white guy"? How would that help to capture the guy? You think the Obama administration would want him to get away on his watch? But you believe this illogical crap because you only listen to media that reinforce your bias.
The sad thing is your swill gets modded up since this mind set agrees with the majority Libertarian views on this site. But I'd say come on...you guys are smarter than this. Research a little to figure out truth or use just a tiny bit of logic. Politics isn't the Cowboys vs. the Broncos..stop being blind stupid fans cheering on your favorite colors.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
HEY! Leave Fox News out of this!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Hey Circle:
who is Rifqa Bary?
Without a political blog, you would have had no idea, because the 'mainstream' media you trust so much would not have covered her story.
The blogs do what the press used to do: hold people's feet to the fire. You don't like it, because it requires you to do something with your mind besides brag about how much smarter you say you are while staying uninformed (and putting on airs of impartiality). Perhaps, Mister IQ, you need a refresher course in capitalization and grammar - as your post would suggest.
BTW, for those of you who don't know and are interested, Rifqa Bary is a Muslim girl, around 17 at the time of the story, who says that her father was physically and otherwise abusive to her and made death threats, and she left her own home. She was sheltered in Florida, I believe, by a church group, and the parents hired a lawyer who made up a set of arrangements, then they fired that lawyer after she was ordered to return to Ohio by a judge. One blogger in particular, Pam Gellar, traveled to the court proceedings at her own expense, and documented both the actual court proceeding and the misleading reporting on the subject. I don't say that every claim of abuse by a minor is valid, but given the many documented examples of mistreatment of women in Islamic culture, shouldn't a minor be given the benefit of the doubt, especially by the so called mainstream press? Forget about your own politics for a minute - if you knew of a child whom you strongly suspected was being abused, and you found her claims credible and gave her safe haven with your family, would you want to be vilified in press reports for doing such a thing? Why is it now acceptable for a media corporation large or small to take a vested interest in publicly attacking someone, before the case is even heard in court, based on a political agenda of bashing church people and shielding Islamic culture from criticism? And I'm an agnostic by the way.
What happens if the blogs go away, and the elitist media machine you agree with ever smears you? Who will get the truth out?
Please don't mod people as +5 insightful when they have absolutely no proof what they are saying is the case. This had nothing to do with the Obama administration. Law enforcement used the information they had. It was wrong. Saying that Obama administration forced them to say it was a white guy is pure conspiratorial bull shit made up by right wing media that Moryath obvious buys in to.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I've learned the other side is not evil, but not by watching biased news, but by actually talking to people on the other side and discussing their views and understanding why they believe them. I can disagree, but I can understand them. They can do the same with me. I am blessed to have open-minded friends all over the political spectrum. Biased media makes people more ignorant, more close-minded, and is a detriment to our country.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
The Arizona law is not about border enforcement, but rather if the law enforcement agencies in Arizona have identified somebody as having violated the law, they need to act and have that law enforced even if it happens to be a federal law. Do you think that if a local police agency saw a money counterfeiting operation, that they should say "I sure hope you don't get caught by the feds", or that perhaps they ought to act and help enforce those anti-counterfeiting laws? It sort of is the job of a law enforcement agency to, I don't know, actually enforce laws they know are being violated?
It isn't like an Arizona police department can detain and imprison people for immigrations violations, but they can certainly inform the federal government that a law is being broken and hold them just like any citizen can do before the "proper authorities" arrive. The question then arises as to if it is proper to ignore that laws are being broken when a formal complaint about a law being broken is being made by a state agency to the federal government. Something really seems screwed up there if a federal immigration officer refuses to cooperate in that situation.
Some communities have gone to the complete opposite extreme on immigration laws to the point they are prohibiting their officers from even communicating any information about immigration status to the federal government at all. That to me is just as wrong and perhaps even worse.
Yeah, I know there is more to the Arizona law than simply this viewpoint, but the basic premise that a state officer asking to have federal laws actually enforced shouldn't be too over the top. As long as you accept this basic premise, the rest is debating about how active those state officers ought to be about doing that kind of enforcement. There certainly is a problem if the citizens of a state get so worked up that they get their state legislature to become more active in a law enforcement activity that ought to be a federal enforcement issue, and the blame falls on the federal government here instead of Arizona for screwing up so awfully in the lack of enforcement of existing laws.
This is wild-eyed speculation. How the fuck does that pass as "insightful"?
>>>Obama is just encouraging the graduates to do something with their lives instead of frittering them away.
Or frittering away company time, once these grads get jobs. I see a lot of coworkers letting themselves get distracted by Instant Messaging on their screens, or texts on their cellphones. And I myself get distracted by frequent slashdot updates. The information bombardment is pulling us away from being truly productive (i.e. getting our work done).
Contrary to Obama's claim "talk radio" doesn't bother me too much, because it's just background noise, but the interactive media is definitely a time eater.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Distracted, a phone would never distract me!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
I dunno... I often say I don't know how to use certain types of technology (even though I do). It's my way of telling people that I'm not going to fix their computers, cell phones, tvs, etc and to go figure it out themselves.
The paired statements you have cherry picked don't even contradict each other. Keep jerking.
If you didn't make it up, you should be able to dig up a source or at least some credible evidence for the truth of your statement.
Several occurred, although most of them were "commentary", which is opinion thinly disguised as news. Here's one example:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/05/02/msnbc_terrorism_analyst_blames_right-wing_group_for_failed_nyc_car_bomb.html
In this particular case, he kept saying it was a "home grown group". He tried to broaden it a bit by saying it could be "Al Queda or right-wing", but I think it's pretty clear that he meant "home-grown" == "right-wing".
However, the best one of all wasn't the news media: it was the mayor of New York:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdbUwlM4bK4
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Too bad you opened your mouth.
that's all I have, I use it to peruse slashdot, groklaww and a few other sites while reading.I don't care of other people have nothing or if they have ten iphones.
As for Mr, "I can't live without my blackberry", he can just shove it up his ass.
'
The problem is that we have become a nation of poorly thought out laws.
Our current immigration laws violate one of the founding principles of this country. Our Statue of Liberty even has this ideal inscribed on it. Everything you hear said about Mexicans today echoes that of the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, and basically every other ethnic group out there when their mass immigration periods were happening such as the Irish potato famine. Our nation has become so weak that we must limit ourselves? It doesn't make any sense, you say amnesty hasn't worked, to that I say, when was amnesty ever attempted?
I live in Arizona, I know people from a great many different cultures and when you get down to it, we're all basically the same decent people. Yeah, we have our differences but they don't stop us from building a better society together.
The bottom-line is that we have 20 million people in this country that we either need to give a path to citizen or boot them out. Limbo is hurting everyone. I'd say give them a real opportunity to become citizens, those that don't then have no moral ground to stand on and deporting them should be less polarizing for people. Otherwise deporting 20 million people is going to be extremely costly in blood and money.
Actually, he spoke at the University of Michigan's graduation also, where he advised Beck & Limbaugh fans to read a Huffpost article or two, and Liberals to watch Fox News. He also advocated against name-calling like Fascist, Socialist and Teabagger, because once you've given someone a derogatory label, it's impossible to come to a compromise with them.
No, I am glad he did.
I mean, it was pretty obvious that this dude was not a "Middle aged white man in his 40s," but at the time, that ALL the authorities had to go on. The media went crazy with it as they are wont too, but that does not change the facts
The irony here is that you do not realize that you are guilty of the bias that you readily accuse of.
I thought the Bush years were full of people spouting BS to validate themselves, but that is nothing compared to the Obama years.
They're not good for the environment though...
Take into account the materials they (and their packaging) are made of, the factories in which they are made, the way the waste product from said factories, packaging and the dead devices are disposed of.
And yes, I know there are recycling programs for these devices... but honestly compare the number of people that use these to those who don't. Survey says... Why drive to Best Buy when you have a perfectly good trash can in the kitchen...
This just in: Global Thermonuclear War was narrowly avoided today, after President Obama missed a call on the red phone because he was too busy reading slashdot RSS feeds on his iPhone.
Yeah, they should be nattering away with their friends on Blackberry Messenger rather than Xbox Live. Way more productive. Perhaps someone should point out to him that Xbox Live is an American company and BBM is run by filthy Canucks.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Obama is just encouraging the graduates to do something with their lives instead of frittering them away.
How did you get that out of his speech? It came across to me as a thinly veiled attack on "alternate" media sources. He specifically mentioned the ability of unsubstantiated rumors to spread like wildfire. The "tea party" movement sprung up through the very channels that Obama is concerned about. In the digital age where people can get information from any source they choose, the controls that the media has imposed over society are breaking down. In some cases the break down of controls allows some real crack pots to get their theories out there. Yet with the free exchange of information, those crack pots can be shouted down and debunked. Given that, I do not see what Obama is so worried about.
Actually, I do see what he is concerned about. He is concerned that the media is losing control. Every day, fewer people are believing the shit being shoveled by the main stream media. Fewer and fewer people are believing the same communications channels that allowed Obama to stand up get elected by vague, feel good promises of potential for change without ever putting forward any real action plans. When the Federal Reserve and the Treasury stand up and tell people, "Fear not, everything is under control.", the people can refer to a lot of alternative sources of information that inform them of the reality of the situation. When the generals and politicans get up and say, "Everything is peachy keen in Afghanistan." People can do their own research and realize that it is a complete mess over there and the United States government bit off more than they can chew.
You mean the truth is finally emerging past all the crap propaganda? It just seems you are one of the few left who don't see the lies, and copious amounts of lies too.
...after Mohammed's (ptooie) death...
Move along everyone, no bias to see here. Nope. not at all.
Exactly.
Talking about information bias, I could clearly see from the facts you chose that you're pro-Israel.
Well it's seem you should listen to your advice.
Tell me, do you really think the "Jewish Council for Public Affairs" is an unbiased source for the Arab-Israeli conflict?
I used to have my iPhone connected to the company Exchange server, and I thought it was teh awesome. Then it turns out Steve Jobs was lying about the security capabilities of the iPhone so all iPhones were banned from connecting to the company mail server. At first I was completely lost and felt cut off from the world. Shortly thereafter, I realized just how much instant 24/7 access had completely taken over my life.
I'm a programmer at a bank, so I really don't need to be responding to email at 9:00 PM. We do need security, so I don't really blame them for taking a shit on iPhone when the truth about Apple lying about the full device encryption came out.
I can still check my email remotely via the web access when I'm at lunch, but I don't feel like I have to answer every email immediately regardless of the hour. I do miss having my calendar sync to my phone. That would still be pretty useful, I think.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Because one person's "frittering" is another person's life-long gratifying, technology advancing, society improving, human race evolving career.
The man's a goddamned smoke screen, a smiling face to charm the masses into trusting their government. If blogging and video games are bullshit, then what does that make him ? Meta-bullshit ?
These "ubiquitous gadgets and information" are the driving force behind humankind's emancipation. We are smarter today than we were thirty years ago (MTV excluded). As much as one group is marathoning toward idiocracy, another is on the path to enlightenment, all thanks to the wealth of information and rapid communication. It's like our minds are turning into a beowulf cluster. Yes, there's a bit of pain in the interconnects, and there's a lot of garbage-in/garbage-out, but to dismiss technology as a "distraction" is akin to declaring "I like being stupid". This is precisely the sort of thing USA-haters thrive on, because we (yes, *I*) see this as the fundamental problem with the world's loudest nation.
If I hadn't already posted on this thread, I'd mod you up.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
He also mentioned iPads. Those aren't game consoles.
So is he talking about consoles or tablet computers? He's a flip-flopper!
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
It reminds me of the Fantasy Football Nerds thinking that they're less nerdy than Dungeons & Dragons Nerds. Same diff, dude.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I am reminded of years of "Hallibushitlercheneyseigheil" and just laughing my ass off every time I hear the various "whoa this is unprecedented what people are saying about Obama" comments...
how can you start a critique of anything by saying "I don't know how this works, but it's bad"?
I don't use either XBox or Facebook myself, but I don't need to know how they work to know that they're too much of a distraction to my kids (and my wife).
Oh, give me a fucking break.
He's talking about people mistaking using gadgets for productivity and using only single sources of news rather than actually being productive, thinking for themselves and trying to actually be informed.
Yeah, be informed, but only from the sources that he feels are legitimate. Anybody seeking news from other sources is a whack job, filling their head with paranoid bullshit, that isn't verified by people he agrees with/trusts. Perhaps we should ask him to make a list of approved news sources so that we can avoid dissent^?^?^?^?^?
distraction.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
or it could be that unless it was one of the big news corporations, that could afford to send someone to the other side of the planet, one would have to rely on a news agency for the out of town news?
but now, thanks to the net, anyone with a cameraphone can in theory be a correspondent.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
the immigration law specifically PROHIBITS stopping anyone based on skin color.
Well, I hope you whites carry around your birth certificates, because last I checked Europe wasn't part of the US.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
The guy above me is absolutely right. Someone mod it up even more.
Yeah, I saw that when googling around (I also saw some that suggested it had to be Islamists, with fairly good reason), but the "40 year old white male" seems to be a description coming from the police, whereas Moryath needs to prove that it came "at the urging of the Obama administration" as he claimed. AFAIK, this is untrue.
Will all the well meaning new programs and ideas, I'd say more bits are spilled by this president than any other. Yes, we can all read about the impending default of the U.S. faster, he has a point there.
Tell you what, you balance the budget, and I'll stop checking up on you 2x/day, Mr. Obama .
the immigration law specifically PROHIBITS stopping anyone based on skin color
The law also REQUIRES law enforcement to stop someone who is reasonably suspicious.
The law also allows third parties to sue law enforcement agencies if they DON'T stop people who are reasonably suspicious.
It's quite easy for a cop to stop someone based on racial profiling first and come up with an excuse about reasonable suspicion later if they have to.
While there IS a federal legal requirement for aliens to carry papers, there is NO requirement for citizens to carry papers, thankfully (so far, AZ law effectively excluded)
The law is fucked up
(CAPS are added to stay in keeping with parent's style)
Did he say that or are you just making that shit up? And even if he did say that - which he didn't - can you show me where it's become a policy, or even a hint of policy, to make it impossible for people to get their news from wherever?
I have great compassion for the mentally ill, but people like you are really straining that.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
i have no doubt the anecdote you just wrote above is true
but i can find just as many anecdotes on the web that serve radical leftist agendas too. would you like an anecdote from a radical lefty blog that proves a belief of yours wrong? oh, its a lie then, right?
which is the whole problem: if its not from a prominent news organization with a reputation to uphold, its just a random unsubstantiated story. after all, no one ever lies on the internet... right?
but you won't accept that as an argument against blatant political blogs with an obvious agenda, because you don't actually care about the truth, you care about pushing your agenda
which again would be fine, everyone has an agenda. but what some people will do in service of an agenda is intellectually dishonest. for example, you have no problem calling any unsubstantiated bullshit that supports your beliefs as the "truth" and anything in the mainstream media that might challenge your beliefs as "elitist"
this kind of reactionary adherence to propaganda that only adheres to your beliefs is the sign of dangerously closed mind. it says volumes about your own intellectual failures, it says nothing about reality, and it says nothing about mainstream media except that you don't like mainstream media because it challenges your opinions. you can't deal with the fact that something reported as the truth from the mainstream media might actually be right, and therefore your opinion is wrong, and therefore you have to reject the entirety of mainstream media as "elitist"
did you ever notice how the far right calls the meanstream media left wing and the far left calls mainstream media right wing? maybe that says more about the far right and the far left than the mainstream media itself? ;-)
but you're probably not even reading me anymore. i'm challenging your opinion. this is very tricky business with you. you've probably just labelled me an elitist socialist muslim communist, or whatever scary word that basically means the same thing that "poopie head" or "boogie man" means to a second grader, and you've moved on
because you have the monopoly on the "truth". you don't need me. you know, someone tha tmigth actually challenge your opinion and make you think. you trust random assholes on the internet with "amazing" stories in the service of a transparent agenda, rather than mainstream media. awesome!
pfffffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Did you see any pics of the guy?
Yes, I saw a picture of the white "suspect". If you were watching the news, there was a video of him taking off his shirt next to the car bomb. Law enforcement was asking the media to ask the viewing public for any information they may have had about that guy, not President Obama. The white suspect didn't end up being the bomber, but at the time he was at least a potential witness.
The point was, the description was off-base, and it was off-base on wishful thinking from certain media personalities
You are wrong, the description was based on video, and did not come from the media, wishful thinking or otherwise.
In other words... Obama is saying get your head out of VR Land and the internet tubs and get yourself a good paying RL job.
Wouldn't this mean he wants >>LESS people to be dependent on the gov?
It would not be racist if the majority of the people actually deported were Latinos. However, it *is* racist when you are arresting a bunch of people for possibly being illegal immigrants simply because they have brown skin. Basically, what you wind up with, is a situation in which any American, even those with brown skin has to worry about being randomly arrested and harassed.
Or, how would you like it if the police/FBI/etc started randomly arresting white gun owners since violent militia groups are overwhelmingly composed of white gun owners? Do you really not see the problem here?
Besides, there are other non-racist ways to go about combating illegal immigration. You could, for example, go after the companies that hire illegal immigrants. You could make the fines for hiring illegals so high that it is not worth the risk for them to do so. But, no, not in America. We can't go after businesses that do illegal things! That would be un-American!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
He was fine with twitter, and facebook, and media devices when he utilized them for his campaign. We've "moved on" and his stance is, "Now that enough of you have bought into my message, I'd like to discourage you from hearing messages from anyone else. Particularly my opposition."
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Double plus good.
Comments like this are so sophomoric and predictable. It blows me away that they get upvoted. Who thinks that stale crap like that is actually funny? I imagine that the average person voting up stuff like that is some overweight 30 year old virgin wearing an ill fitting Anime t-shirt. He probably has a neckbeard, cargo shorts and sandals. And gross feet. He probably thinks that he is really smart, smarter than all the "Micro$oft Windoze using Sheeple" at least.
In other words I am assuming that the average slashdot poster is a huge fucking douchebag. I think that assumption is probably correct.
Then again this is the site where decade old memes like "All your base..." and "In Soviet Russia..." routinely get upvoted so I guess that I shouldn't expect much.
whereby Mohammed the "prophet" entered into a 10-year truce,
[*Loud buzzer goes off*] I see your true colors, shining through....
Don't tell me...Jesus was enough of a "prophet" that there's no need for scare quotes? Is that your position?
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Uhh Obama wasn't even singling anyone out in particular when mentioning media truth. He just said "some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter," - no mention of alphabet-soup media or anything like that.
You can't call anyone names when you aren't even talking about someone in particular. It was a very broad brush, I think the phrase "don't always believe what you read" applies to what he was saying.
I don't believe people coming here illegally should get a path to citizenship. They should get a path to legal residency and that's it. Citizenship should be reserved for people who follow the rules, and obey the laws. People who have proven that they will break the laws don't deserve to be citizens.
That being said, there is no way we can send 20-40 Million people back without breaking families apart. Impossible.
Here's my version of what needs to be done ...
1) Complete the border fence, all 1600 miles or so of it. Nothing else happens before that. I don't care if it works 100%, just as long as it is otherwise effective.
2) Increase Border Agents and security.
3) Once the fence is completed, then on that date, everyone here illegally has to register and get a red card (or any other not green card). Then they are not here illegally any longer. Red Card gives you certain rights and to protect people from persecution. Red card shows path to full and permanent residency status.
4) Red Card members must spend at least 40 hours a year cleaning up the mess in the southwest desert caused by their migration to the US, or some other form of service. In addition, other rules and regulations must be kept for five years.
5) Legal permanent residents get a new card (blue) to indicate that they have fully complied with red card status for a period of five years. People not completing the five year red card program are required to return to their country of origin, no exceptions.
6) Anyone crossing the boarder after the date certain will not be eligible for red card status. No exceptions. Children born to illegal residents (non registered) will be considered as being born in their native land.
This would be hard, but it is fair. It puts all the pressure on those coming here illegally to get "legal". I'm sure that some well meaning liberal bleeding heart will whine about it "not being fair" or some such thing as to why it won't work. But until we actually TRY to get something done, it isn't working as it is now.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
And the new law affected this how? It certainly didn't require the cops to stop the guy (if race was the only factor), it doesn't require that anyone carry a birth certificate, etc. So what in the new law caused this outcome? Nothing - it was just some idiot cops. (With all due respect to the vast majority of GOOD cops, of course.)
Controversial new AZ law makes being here illegally illegal. Oh wait....
would it be racist if nobody is being arrested for being "illegal" randomly, but actually because they were ... you know ... illegal?
Would it be racist if, say a cop pulled someone over for speeding, and they couldn't produce a Driver's License, and couldn't speak English to say ... you know .... prove who they were before being let go?
I know, it probably is racist to expect people learn to speak English, like all the Germans, Italians and Chinese before them had to do.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Someone has to balance out the Hallelujah Chorus hearers =)
Your brain is not a computer.
I know, now I'm getting heat for my "septic system" ending in a creek. Truly the tyranny of the commons.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Here's what concerns me: "...And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work..."
Here's a man born 1961 - he's 49 years old.
This is not a senior citizen. He'd have been a senior in high school when home computers just started to appear. He'd have been going to college throughout the heydey of video game arcades, and gone to college and worked on his advanced law school stuff with discussions of the NES amongst his peers.
Yet he could exist through all of this - so focused on his progress, so OCD about whatever he was doing - without noticing videogames?
Moreover, he could be a young adult through this whole period, and reach the highest political office in the land (so clearly no dummy, whether you agree with him or not), and not only be ignorant of really quite common technology completely, but be able to toss out the chuckle-line of 'none of which I know how to work'?
Seriously?
Think about that. I know this is a tech-obsessed audience. But I'm 43, and while I occasionally put on the rose-colored specs of 'ah, the simple life before computers', I don't SERIOUSLY imagine that I could be nearly as productive, entertained, and informed as I am today without these devices.
Honestly, this is the sort of statement that comes out of some ancient Senator that's been holding his seat since Reconstruction.
No kidding that his viewpoint is dismissive; I'm only shocked that so many people are talking here about what he said, and not recognizing how insulated and detached a 49-year-old American man would have to be to make such an absurd assertion.
-Styopa
The Tea Party organized itself via XBox Live?
Projecting items into a speech to make it say whatever you want it to say is not reasonable debate. Summary even mentioned an attack on radio, which, as far as I can tell, Obama never even brought up.
Not a typewriter
Can someone please mod this post up a bit? It's VERY to the point and well-stated. Sadly, I don't have any mod points left.
Kudos to you, thesandtiger, for doing what so few on /. ever seem to do: hitting the nail on the head.
However, it *is* racist when you are arresting a bunch of people for possibly being illegal immigrants simply because they have brown skin.
Good thing that is not happening.
Just because a protestor says so, doesn't make it true. The cops know there is an army of ACLU lawyers hovering at the courts waiting for the day a mistake is made.
It all depends on what report you've read. The initial report that caught my attention was framed as, "Obama warns students against iPads and iPhones." Upon reading the excerpts of the speech it became evident that he was warning against consuming any content on the internet. He further made the point that a "good education" is necessary to shield the mind against the distractions on the internet. It was a typical "Follow the herd and you will be okay." speech.
It is kind of worrisome that the President is taking it upon himself to "warn" students against the "dangers" of free speech and open communication on the internet. The message was framed in a way that made it seem like the internet is a dangerous waste of time that will distract students from the "important" things that their professors are trying to teach them. Heaven forbid that students should open their minds to sources of information that haven't been vetted by the educational elite and the textbook publishers.
I consider nobody a "prophet." They're all either mentally disturbed, or on some form of chemical cocktail, or are the same sort of scam artists from which all religions come.
You're right. In this case, it certainly would not be racist to make someone in this situation prove who they were. But you are forgetting a few important things. There are illegals who fit that description who are also Asian or White. One Latino guy in Arizona (I wish I still had the link) who speaks English fine and had a valid state-issued commercial driver's license was arrested in Arizona because the officer still wasn't satisfied and demanded to see the guy's birth certificate right then and there. They are also getting stopped basically because they are brown. The "broken tail light" is generally just an excuse, and it is amazing how high a percentage of the people stopped for a "broken tail light" are Latino. Do you still not see the problem???
Where the hell did I say anything like that? You sure are full of unfounded assumptions aren't you! My wife had to learn English, and I have aunts and uncles who had to learn English to live here. I have no problem with that. Stop making this a fake two-sided issue.
On top of that, you haven't answered the more important question - why are we not aggressively pursuing the businesses that hire illegals and fining them to the point where it is not worth their while to hire them? Most illegals come here for jobs. If there are no jobs, there will be very few illegals that we have to track down and deport.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
who insist that Obama is actually an Atheist Muslim Socialist
I find it kind of funny that these things are actually regarded as potential negative aspects of american politicians.
As a citizen of Norway, a country with a state church, a king, and even a christian party, I find it ironic how people here find atheist politicians to be the norm, while the US, a country with a firm separation between church and state, it is the complete opposite.
Hell, if you remove muslim (I don't think we're quite ready for that yet, but we're getting there) from the list i quoted, you got the ideal traits of a Norwegian politician. Atheist and socialist. All but one of the major parties and most minor ones currently have female leaders, so we could need some more males as well.
Obama's advice is good advice to anyone who really cares about the world. To anyone that REALLY cares about the world, as so many of the good folk on here seem to say they do, two notions are likely important – civic engagement and democratic participation. Obama’s editorial speaks to the fact that these devices do nothing to facilitate these values (nor any other values of this kind it seems to me). Ipads and Xboxs are value neutral. What is not neutral, however, is the content on them. If the content on these devices is largely comprised of fingertip entertainment and viral social novelties, like facebook, then the devices, by extension, will inevitably distract from the theory and practice of values like civic engagement and democratic participation – the values we like to think we care about. Moreover, when media of this kind is made more accessible it makes it harder to convince the increasingly apathetic people that investment in initial civic education should be valued to begin with. In short, devices like the Ipad produce a compounding circle of eroding social goods, and there is a perfect historical example of this at work. In the early days of TV it was heralded as a revolutionary educational device and “a tool of democracy”. Yet what is the net result of TV 50 years later? The NET result seems be couch potatoes, social disenfranchisement and political apathy. It wasn’t TV itself that did this, but the content on it. To be fair, the stuff on TV is not all bad and the people that value the actually educational and democratically participatory content are often very vocal and active. But it does not change the fact that TV has made the majority of us care less about the kind of values that Obama’s editorial was concerned with. TV has, on the whole, made people lazy and distracted. It matters not the nature of the media device, save for degrees of accessibility. But if the device makes content more accessible that ultimately distracts us from the theory and practice of our highest civic duties and social concerns, then we might say the device is evil – or at least contrary to the good. It’s nice to have toys, and I say let our toys be as frivolous and novel as ever. But when frivolous play and flippant novelty take the place of substantive context rich information, civic engagement, and participation in our democracy, than anyone with a social conscience has reason to be weary of Ipads and xboxs and the distractions they bring.
However, it *is* racist when you are arresting a bunch of people for possibly being illegal immigrants simply because they have brown skin.
That would be racial profiling which is against the law. The new anti-illegal immigration law in Arizona doesn't change that. You and those who marked you "insightful" should read it. It's not long. BTW, Arizona does go after businesses that hire illegal immigrants. Again, read.
MG
I mean, gaming is meant to be a distraction. It's meant to pull us away from our daily grind. But I have to say that we definitely got a president who's a lot better than other candidates in terms of how he views gaming. When people get poor grades in school and people are there to play the blame game (no pun intended), Obama says it's the fault of the parents. FINALLY! Clinton was against violence in video games. Who would've known what would have happened had SHE gotten into office...
Fucking iPads, how do they work???
And I still want to know, why are they not simply going after the businesses that hire illegal immigrants? If you don't want illegal immigrants in the country stop hiring them!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Sigh. And you apparently didn't read my posts. I know that is what the law says. That is not what is done in practice. Stop simply reading words on a page and try looking at actual reality for a change. I know that might mean you have to leave your mom's basement, but we all must make sacrifices in the pursuit of facts.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Did you cut and paste those cherry-picked partial quotes directly from Faux News or what?
What Obama said in reaction to the Gates incident was extremely polished and nuanced, and you've completely misrepresented it. I read the entire transcript, did you?
Here, let me give you a translation suited to your apparent intellectual level: Scary Black President Man say "black people scared of po-po, but maybe we be happy some day". Do I need to dumb this down more? You could try the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report, they both cater to the mentally deficient.
tl;dr... busy with TwitterBook
Want to hear more about spokesboobs, though.
I read your words. Words that were responding on a thread about the new Arizona anti-illegal immigration law. Words that said it would be racist to arrest people just for having brown skin. You were implying that the Arizona law allows for or will result in this. Or are you going to tell me you were just posting a random racism rant that accidentally landed in a conversation about the Arizona law. I'm sick of you and the rest of the FUD spreaders trying to misrepresent what the Arizona legislature is trying to accomplish. I read the words on the page because that's what laws are. If cops break one law trying to enforce another it doesn't mean the law they are trying to enforce is bad. It means the cop is.
MG
Funny thing, I've never actually met or read any posts by these mythical Obama-worshippers that I keep hearing about. In fact, every single time someone has referred to him as the Messiah, it's been a right-winger.
Interesting conversation, with the usual outbursts from haters, apologists, [insert direction here]-wing wackos, and conspiracy-fetishists, most of whom don't seem to have given real thought to anything other than "how do these statements compare to my pre-conceived beliefs".
Given a little context and consideration, I think the president made a few valid points, albeit perhaps awkwardly. First of all, anyone here should know that the internet is full of bad information. (Exhibit A: this discussion.) I think most of us realize that limiting one's input to sources that match our particular prejudices is a road to ignorance. Furthermore, in the years I've been alive and aware, I have from time to time had first hand knowledge of some matter that was reported in the press. In every single case, the article or feature got critical details wrong, not to mention approaching the story from a slanted viewpoint, intentionally or not. Let me repeat that: Every single case.
Apple and Microsoft, of course, might cringe a bit at having their products linked with excessive distraction and information distortion, but that's a marketing and profit concern, not a factual disagreement. They want to sell these devices, hopefully to people who will use them responsibly, but in great numbers regardless.
I won't trouble myself to refute the silly claims people make for any politician's intent. President Obama, and his predecessor, and the one before that, and presidents back as far as I can remember draw forth every possible opinion on every word or facial tic they reveal. Somewhere people got the erroneous notion that the president of the U.S.A. can wave a magic wishing wand and force his personal wish list into reality. Empirical evidence suggests that more often than not, presidents don't get what they wanted. And rightly so.
I did find the quoted passage in the slashdot story summary to be terrifically slanted, as it posited "what the president really meant" rather than what the man really said. But that's one person's opinion, to which he is fully entitled.
So, with that all said, I will now rise up on my soapbox, and take it upon myself to correct the president, and provide greater clarity to this audience.
If you believe everything you read, you are dumb. If you spend all your time reading crappy reporting or slanted opinions, you will become dumber. If you spend more time actually thinking than the time you spend shooting pixel zombies and tweeting your cat's intestinal health events, you will be more productive, and better able to contribute positively to the society in which you live.
On the other hand, sometimes I think people are happier being stupid and misinformed, because, let's face it, it's easier.
WALSTIB!
OK, false alarm. Thought you were another one of those crazy "Islam is a fundamentally evil religion, but Christianity is peaches-and-cream" people.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Islam is fundamentally evil, I'll freely say that. Doesn't make christianity any less deranged - and when the usual crackpots start blubbering "but but but but bible bible so there" in "defending" the 7th century death cult, it doesn't mean shit to me.
Xbox and PlaySataion are information sources? When did that happen?
Like many others, don't care to take any advice about information from a person who has demonstrated a closed mind. Done...
Who said this had any thing to do with his policies? I only said that the president would prefer you get your news from his approved sources, a logical conclusion based on his disapproval of all the clutter that he's complaining about.
I guess having reliable sources for news won't do you much good, because you don't actually read or comprehend well.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
But everyone who watch the comedy NEWS show also watch the news? Have they watched that news segment?
Comedy sticks longer then a news report. How is Reagon, Thatcher etc remembered? Their news images or their spitting image dolls?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Police arresting a college professor in his own home for a contempt of cop charge is, indeed, stupid.
It seems to be a common thread in your two examples though: you think that being required to show identification to government agents (even on your own property, in some cases) is a good idea?
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Obama is showing his ignorance, too bad, he has some major players in his cabinet that are more aware of technology then this, he must not be listening to them....or too distracted by other things then to figure out the benefits of such statistical networking tools such as facebook, myspace and twitter.
Yet the insane increase of the amount of "information" available isn't all for the best.
For starters, the more data, the harder it is to access it in a timely and organised fashion. (One that could lead to an actual reflection instead of just eating up any piece of "info" you can find and taking it for granted)
The important part of information is to have different sources so that nobody can control it. If the same information is just copied, altered and repeated thousand and millions of times, all over the Web what you get is cacophony.
What do you get from cacophony ? Well scared people do stupid thing. For instance they decided to rely on one source they consider trustworthy. This way they can get all the information they need without spending the whole life looking for it. This source has then a Huge power over its users.
Bottom line : 1000 websites telling the same story in 1000 ways, all based on the same real piece of info, meaning factual and written by actual journalists who know what they are doing) = useless redundant infos that is damaging.
More information is positive only if it's genuine first hand original information.
Web 2.0 and the huge increase in the data produced by the human race it has led to is only interesting in terms of allowing opinions to be shared more freely, but again the multiplication of platforms leads to little visibility.
All in all I think Obama is right because he is talking about information and not opinions.
So am I. The American right has become the conservative version of the "bush is teh hitler" leftie wingnuts.
CAPTCHA: boners
Normally when despots want to take over a country, they go after the opposition media first. They're finding it a bit harder in a country like the U.S. than they imagined.
Oh, look! I can see November from my front porch!
srsly, Obama just told the world that he's totally over his head in his job.
Currently he's blaiming it on tech, next he'll start hitting his wife.
Then the kids.
If he was Clinton, i'd say just smoke some pot and relax, but he's not. (oh ya, and inhale this time. lol)
lol
really though, i find new gadgets a bit confusing also, but not confusing enough that I think i'm going to get good information about life on the xbox.
It's a video game console dude.
i mean, wtf?
Your old, new stuff is scary, get with it. And have your kids show you have to use them, they probably figured it out within 1 minute of picking up whatever it is.
Be seeing you...
...the original article does have a point about most people's definition of an "unreliable source" being "a source I don't agree with."
.
Bullshit.
Please define "most people", and cite your references.
It is damned easy to throw out blanket statements like this, especially when they have a kind of seductive way of prompting us to shrug and say, "Well, that makes sense." It is somewhat harder to actually think about what is being said. The strong implication is that all "sources" are reliable and we discount those we disagree with as un-reliable simply because we disagree with them. "Talk radio" is demonstrably unreliable as a source of information. And why should it be otherwise? It's an entertainment medium, designed to sell commercials, and nothing more. The fact that I disagree with him 99% of the time doesn't change the fact that Glenn Beck is fountain of nonsense 99% of the time. But I don't lose any sleep over Beck selling commercials to those willing to support his goofy show. I most certainly do lose sleep over the fact that there are a lot of people out there who think that Glenn is any kind of credible information source.
What all this has to do with iPads and whatnot, I don't really get, but I have a strong suspicion that some speech writer was trying to make the prez look a little less threatening (i.e. not "young and radical") to the demographic group that historically has trouble coping with changes... like "...all them new-fangled information gadgets".
you just proved your own point with your little rant here. demonstrate how talk radio is unreliable, sources? so you don't like glenn beck and that makes him a "fountain of nonsense"? can we get footnotes on that blanket 99% of nonsense glenn beck is spouting? hypocrites like you makes everyone seem less credible.
No one is using Clinton or Carter as an excuse for failure though.
Bush is gone. Bringing Bush up all the time to apologize for Obama's failures becomes a weaker and weaker argument every day. And it was really weak to start with.
1. "With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.
This is referring to the "information", which I understand to be the INFORMATION that one receives from browsing the web, get news feeds (from any source out there), watching videos (again, from any source), etc.
2. He bemoaned the fact that "some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction," in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.
I understand this to mean anything that did not come from mass media (i.e.: TV), is a "crazy claim".
3. "All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."
I think that kind of pressure is good. The pressure for real information to get out there, information that is true or partially true, but ignored by the mass media. In fact this is putting pressure where it should be, on our politicians to start behaving...........
Real men don't need signitures!!!
He has people to read his e-mail... seriously.
+++OK ATH
Are you new to the Internet? Your ID's only slightly higher than mine, so I presume not - but just in case: This is *the* place for people who are totally batshit crazy to get a stage and get people to believe it. Put your email address up on a website anywhere, wait about six months, and then start reading *all* of your email. You'll get all sorts of junk that's obviously total crap to smart people, but which is only profitable because there /are/ idiots who believe anything they read. Talked to a kid recently about the Internet? They *are* the idiots who buy this crap; they have no distrust.
Obama was warning the students to be smart and not believe everything they read. I'm pretty sure it could be argued that he's my hero because he's personally trying to put an end to fake penis enlargement pills and 419 scams. That actually makes slightly more sense than the "OMG Obama just told us he's gonna shut down teh Interwebz" arguments that these empty-headed sheep keep repeating.
Or are you also going to claim that over 90% of the 10K emails I get every day is not, in fact, distracting spam? And claim that there aren't banner ads everywhere. And claim that everything on every blog online is 100% accurate?
Here's his speech in normal-person terms: "The Internet is at least 3/4 full of shit. Remember that guy who stood on the quad and shouted at anyone who would listen? He's got a blog, as do a hundred others just like him who are too frightened of the public to actually go yell on a quad. Don't get sucked in and believe it all. Learn to filter what you read. And have a nice life." /yes, I'm available for commencement speeches. And weddings (thanks, Universal Life church). And I cost a lot less than the President of anything. ;)
They're pretty good at not lying, but the information is quite obviously being presented in a way so as to be most inflammatory to the specific audience. I'm gonna call that "full of shit" - it's not lying, but IMHO it's intentionally being deceptive.
I heard something on Beck a couple of weeks ago which I was pretty sure was flat out wrong, but all I remember is thinking "huh, he finally resorted to flat out lying" - I don't remember the topic. In any event, I just enjoy listening to the way they manage to twist any random event into something that either supports their view or opposes "the other" view. Being able to do that for a few hours straight is genuinely impressive. In fact, my wife just observed this evening (regarding this "Obama v/s technology" topic) that it'd probably be amazing what talk radio hosts could do if they could channel their creativity into something worthwhile rather than just using it to stir crap up. :)
Our harsh lives, fraught, as they are, with danger, trials and tribulations?
you can't imagine that without government regulation in the areas you cite that people would be more free?
can you imagine that there are other limits on your freedom than what the government does?
perhaps corporations? are their activities a limit on your freedom? do they need to be regulated?
how about poor health? is that a limit on your freedom? do you nnot deserve freedom from crippling or impossible costs to maintain it?
how about roads, schools, simple law enforcement? or is the only threat to your freedom from the house senate or white house? what about the highway robberyman? is he a limit on your freedom?
you have an extremely limited grasp of reality if you believe that freedom is only limited by the government. mostly, your freedom is limited by other people. not least of which the whims of an aristocracy that your supposed "freedom fighting" empowers, at the expense of the common man
but you don't see that do you?
your words serve the moneyed few, they do not serve the common man. that really is the truth. try to understand someday how a classist social structure works and limits the common man. then maybe you will truly understand what freedom is
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Very well said. Although, I almost forgot what the orginal subject of this thread was... something about Obama telling college grads about red-herrings...
Funny thing, I've never actually met or read any posts by these mythical Obama-worshippers that I keep hearing about. In fact, every single time someone has referred to him as the Messiah, it's been a right-winger.
Yes, but when you hear many mindless drones saying "Obama's gonna save us all!", without having a clue who he is and what he stands for, it's not far from a Messianic proclamation...
I'm not for or against him, I just hope he can back up most of what he says with actions. (Not this though. He can pry my games out of my cold dead hands!) That whole "the difference between theory and practice" thing.
Not everyone becomes a completely mindless zombie when using said media. Besides, all work and no play makes Homer something something...
I see nothing wrong with some distractions. I mean, come on, who really wants to work 24/7? As long as said distraction doesn't become more important than that which it is distracting you from, what is wrong with it?
You're depressingly poor at reading comprehension. The Arizona law explicitly prohibits this behavior. Citing a cop practicing racial profiling just proves that some cops are jerks who break the law. That is certainly not news.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Gee, you forgot to include anything from the Daily Kos or HuffingtonPost. What does any of that crap have to do with what the President said? Are you saying that he's justified in shooting off his mouth and being paranoid? Naturally, your karma-whoring links got you a positive mod. Congrats!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
No, I was pointing out that a President admitting that he didn't have all the facts, yet being confident that the police "acted stupidly", is a jackass.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Dinegrating technology and it's uses is a thinly veiled attempt to overlay the "public service" meme onto the young people he was addressing.
To say one particular mode of living is "correct" for everyone is wrongheaded. Far better for these graduates to explore their own way of living - not because it is any better or worse than any other, but because it is their own. From such insight true progress is made.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Thanks everyone for having a great discussion on this, its nice not having to read thru a flame war ;)
It doesn't make any sense, you say amnesty hasn't worked, to that I say, when was amnesty ever attempted?
1986.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control_Act_of_1986
What limits, if any, would you put on immigration? If none, who pays for all the immigrants education, healthcare, etc.? Won't that fall upon the already overburdened system? I understand that there are plenty of people around the world that would love to come here (I sponsored one, and had to prove that I could afford it), but I don't believe that dropping all the rules is the right way to go, and would simply overwelm our system, and drag us further into resession/depression.
Just another day in Paradise
Yes, and no one has ever been stopped for Driving While Black either.
I giggle every time I hear that phrase. Not that I don't believe it happens, but it's not just a black thing. When I was a WASPy 19 yr old, my parents bought me a nice shiny expensive sports car. During the following year, I was pulled over no less than seven times, never once having broken the law. Young kid, expensive car...profiled.
Just another day in Paradise
That bill only granted amnesty to some people and the scale of the problem was no where near what it is today.
If we weren't busy fighting in two countries thousands of miles away we would have adequate funding for the influx of immigration. The problem as I see it is that no one wants to endure any short term hardship while a new population assimilates. I'm not saying there wouldn't be an impact to our bottom-line for a period of time.
The thing history has shown us though is that the new population can add to our culture and ultimately fuel our economy as opposed to draining it. Right now though, Mexicans are more known for cheaper labor due to current immigration laws. That assumption would go away when they can sue their employer for exploitation which I believe to be the moral high ground.
This idea that everyone around the world would flock to us is interesting too given how a lot of the world dislikes us. I've seen nothing to make me think we'd be flooded much more than we already are. Protectionism lead us into the great depression and now we're using the same attitudes and finding ourselves in another recession. When you make it hard for 20 million people to flourish don't be surprised when they drain your resources.
I do agree that making them citizens isn't necessarily the answer since they violated our laws to get here. Making them legal residents however protected fully by the constitution is a good idea in my mind. The only thing they couldn't do is vote or run for public office. Even that would probably have to change over time though.
What does any of that crap have to do with what the President said?
I could say the same thing about your "Beer Summit" reference.
Everyone and his brother had an opinion about a man being arrested in his own home for what was nothing more than Contempt of Cop. I can only assume you brought that up because you're grasping for some sort of moral equivalence here. What? You couldn't find the video of Obama calling Kanye West a jackass? Or was it that the president expressed an opinion counter to your own, about an even both of you were equally (mis)informed about? I suspect it was that.
Are you saying that he's justified in shooting off his mouth and being paranoid?
Yes, because he's not paranoid.
We have the leadership of the Republican party openly engaging in bizarre conspiracy theories unseen since the days of John Birch Society and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It's absurd. It's something you'd expect to hear on the Alex Jones Show.
Between being self-professed "defenders of the constitution" while simultaneously arguing that the fourth through the ninth amendments can be flouted whenever a president of their political persuasion wants, and now actively promoting and theorizing unsupported and unbelievable conspiracies, the right wing has gone full-blown crazy.
There's no place in serious political discussion to promote this talk, and yet they do.
Congrats!
Thanks troll.
Ok, you asked when it was tried before, and I did the homework for you. I made no arguement regarding the effectivness.
I've personally travelled to over 40 countries in my life, and lived overseas for more than a dozen years. I can assure you that while there are many people who hate us, there are multitudes that would love to live here. America is still viewed as the land of opportunity in most of the world.
I'm not in any way asking for the gates to be closed, but do believe there needs to be some limits.
Protectionism (dealing with foreign origin good/services...that I'd argue are frequently state supported) and immigration/border control are two different topics.
So, it sounds like you're in favor of an amnesty. I would argue that that's completely unfair to those who took the effort to attain their citizenship legally. I spent over a year (along with a shitload of time (had to get an immigration attorney...long story), and money) doing that for my ex-wife.
Just another day in Paradise
Not a member here - but thought it worth saying - news has been slanted since the invention of the stone tablet. Those who control the newsfeed (however it is delivered) slant the news to their purposes. It is taught in every Journalism class. The real topic Obama mentioned was how difficult it is to get accurate information. His full quote:
"And meanwhile, you’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- (laughter) -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy."
His use of product names itself has proved to be a distraction in all the discussions going on here and elsewhere. His intent is to caution people about forming opinions based on immediate "data" (note - not factual information) versus investigating multiple sources of news to determine the facts. And the immediacy of instant messaging networks in any form can be a danger in distracting people from seeking the truth.
* Reached the Monolith before HAL9000
* Saved Grandpa when Lassie couldn't
* Signed into law the Mutant Registration Act
* Tap-danced on the moon
* Saved the Princess
* Carved a spoon out of a bigger spoon
* Watched the Watchmen
* Defeated Dracula in the final level of "Castlevania"
* Discovered the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa
* Led the Rebel Alliance to victory over the moons of Endor
* Restored peace in Middle Earth
* Solved 'Myst' in ten minutes
* Followed the Yellow Brick Road
* Converted lead into gold
* Got the power up and won the game
* Prevented the Borg from assimilating Earth
* Slain the dragon
* Helped Ripley return home safely
* Defeated Chuck Norris in a starring contest
* Helped a team that didn't believe in itself win the state championships