"We have a problem in this country (the USA), where HUGE numbers of people are putting in 40-60 hours and not able to get by. I have friends who work that much and still need assistance with their heating bills and food. That's a problem."
Welcome to the club! We have no shirts but our manifesto is this:
If you live in Europe, you will notice that the winter has (for the third time in a row) surprised both business and authorities. As a result:
1. You can go to work late and excuse yourself with the transport system. 2. Staying more at home means on average more sex (yhea I know, this is/. but still...) 3. You save money by not going on that Christmas shopping spree (in another country), because there are no flights. 4. You can have endless fun poking overzealous environmentalist by asking in true Fox news style "is this the global warming?"
Without him there would be other excuse or no excuse at all. So you are advocating that WE should take anything obediently, without fighting back because THEY might beat US even more ferociously, excusing themselves with OUR disobedience which is there in the first place because of THEIR actions?!?!?!?. I fail to see any reason here....
But you will soon give the nukes to a deranged woman, more dangerous and foolish than all teenagers combined. Sarah Palin, if you are wondering what I am talking about....
Don't go there! This morning on the BBC they already said that because of the cyber attacks and counterattacks on Wikileaks the governments will impose draconian Internet control and we will all suffer.
Do I need to spell out the fundamental, barefaced, arrogant lie in this statement? Hint: Internet control is a hot topic (as any/.-er knows) for how long already?
Let’s now blame the terrorist Assange for the next Internet patriotic act. Well, done media spin doctors...
But you have one requirement which you cannot avoid. The building material should be able to produce vast array of different structures. Complexity is the key. Apart from carbon there a few other elements that can form stable long chains with itself, but the conditions needed will disfavor all the rest that is needed. Like a solvent, for instance (water).
I sound like a carbon chauvinist, but so far it seems that chemistry agrees.
I am not trying to be smart or funny here. I sincerely think that the WHY question will turn out to be meaningless and thus the answer I give is the most appropriate one. Actually no, it is not meaningless but the real answer does not satisfy us (because we are fools that think that complexity must arise from INTENTION). The answer is thus: because under those conditions the following forces arise and the following interactions which in time lead to.(insert a few thousand pages of info here).......stars.....inorganic......organic...... chemistry....live....evolution......observer.
Do not forget that with language you can ask meaningless questions. Whatever we can prove in the future, even if we know EXACTLY how the Universe came to be, you can ALWAYS ask "What was before?" "Why". And you run into the infinite regress problem to boot. Game over. So simply, save you breath and energy for question that really matter.
No answer to a meaningless or unprovable question is much better than a false answer. Because the issue is so important for humans (for whatever reason), people believing in different false answer will fight ferociously over who is right. According to some philosophers that is the main reason we fight over religion so much. We fight to make people believe in OUR false answer. because there can be only one correct answer (or so we believe).
Do they really recognize themselves in a mirror? I though that this ability is an indication of a certain degree of consciousness. Being aware of the difference between "me" and the rest of the world.
AFIK, humans below age of 2 do not recognize their image in a mirror. The test I saw is simple - put a small spot on the cheek of the kid, put it in front of a mirror and ask it to remove the spot from the image. They either reach for the mirror or directly reach for their cheeks.
Adult apes recognize themselves too, not sure about monkeys.
It has always been my speculation that animals have degrees of consciousness , that it is not just zero or one, i.e either not conscious of fully conscious.
Stop the depletion of the seas due to industrial fishing (not to mention the "research" on whales) and then I can consider you a serious country!
Of course, industrial fishing is not practiced only by Japan. It is utterly unbelievable - the amount of dead creatures which we don't use and throw back into the water (dead) can be up to 90% of all there is in the net!! Why no one is screaming bloody murder! Why do we tolerate this amount of BS in the world? At the moment the 20 monkeys are spending our money to chat about currency wars and printing money by the Feds, while at the same time the oceans are empty.
I am sorry, but just like one of my old post about the amazingly energy efficient jet engines (what's the profit, I asked - we will just fly more frequent so any "saving" will be immediately canceled by increased consumption and increased population) I have to say it again - what's the profit? Why the fuss? Why do we even bother to listen to this drivel? It only gives the illusion of safety and mislead us to believe that someone actually has an objective of making sustainable economy. The objective is always the same - money and power. Without real paradigm shift all efforts are meaningless.
The system we are living in encourages destructive behavior; anybody who slows down the rate of destruction is immediately in losing position since success is measured by the things consumed and accumulated. So, we are like kids who stuff themselves uncontrollably with sweets. All will get sick at the end (in our case die rather than being sick), but while there is still candy everyone keeps eating as fast as they can, because otherwise "the other kid will eat more and be stronger than me".
Stop wasting resources to tell us how we should not waste them, while at the same time saying that any decrease in consumption leads to economy collapse.
I wonder why people keep bickering about insignificant things (not specifically here, but in general), keep on discussing forever "in what colour to paint the ship, while it is sinking?" Another analogy - we are needlessly throwing in the garbage bin packs food that contains say 1000 calories per pack, but we build special trash bin (using LOTS of resources for R&D) which converts into useful energy small portion of the energy released by the impact between the food and the container. WOW, we are getting back 20 calories, otherwise lost in heat! We are going green! Youhoooo!
I am speechless by all this. Such stupidity surely will be edited by natural selection. Can't wait...
Have you ever read the interpretation of the Fall by Daniel Quinn, the author of "Ishmael"?
I find his idea the most reasonable and plausible one I have ever heard.
His speculation is that the story of the Fall was not created by "civilized" people, but by their hunter-gatherer neighbors (later it was incorporated into our mythology) in an attempt to explain the seemingly illogical behavior that the civilized exhibited, namely – “Our way is the right way to live! Everything that eats our food must die! Everything that eats the food of our food must die! Everyone who is not like us must be converted or die!”
I hope the above statements do not need elaboration – the process of conversion and/or extermination is now finally coming to a closure – all indigenous people are either “civilized” or dead! I am not counting a few thousand “savages” scattered around – now we try to preserve them (at least up to the point when we find resources on their land – check the mass suicides of “savages” in Brazil in the 90-ies).
Those gatherers saw the benefits of our system – growth and power. They also saw some of the drawbacks – lots of work (relative to their lifestyle), just to stay alive. They also reasoned about our motives and decided that those strange people have acquired a special knowledge – the knowledge of who lives and who dies (good and evil). This knowledge is for the gods only because what is good for one is evil for another, thus only the gods have sufficient wisdom to decide.
Thus, Adam (meaning “man”, not “male”), seduced by Eve (meaning “life”, i.e. growth) ate the fruit and acquired the knowledge of good and evil (who lives and who dies). For that he was banished and punished to sweat all his life (manufacture food with lots of work, rather than just take the food that grows around) and he was cursed to suffer and eventually, die (basic stuff – everything that grows without limit, dies).
Quinn claims that if the legend of the Fall was created by civilized people, the knowledge of good and evil would be a gift from god, not a curse! Because, after all, it is because of this knowledge that we were able to build the whole civilization and that is praiseworthy, no? This knowledge is our greatest power; it is not a curse, it's a blessing! Of course man's destiny is to be civilization builder, right?
People, people, hear me out. The article about liberals and atheists states that : intelligent people on average exhibit trends in their characters which are not evolutionary determined and/or enhanced.
Anything here about US congress? About Obama? Big/small government? NO. Read below, I hope I can make my point clear:
Grossly exaggerated support example: Conservative cares about himself and his family. Very normal and understandable attitude, in line with evolution. Attention: in line with evolution so far - tribal life and early civilization! Conditions have changed - mature, technologically advanced, immensely powerful civilization is something quite different. If there is any meaningful criteria for "success" in Nature it is the ability to react accordingly to changing environment.
Liberal can think for the whole species, the whole community of life, sometimes disregarding personal and family gain. It's pretty abstract to care about billions people to whom you have no genetic connection whatsoever (extra point: studies also show that it is usually childless people who overly care for others - they do not have to conform with the status quo to get their genes procreated since they have elected not to procreate.Thus they are freer of constrains to put their lives in danger or inconvenience, which is always what you get for being truly forward-thinking or trying to change the status quo.)
OK, so liberals are dead-end in evolution, right? Less children, no moral support via some belief in some god, caring for everyone.....No again.
I would argue that at this stage of the development of civilization our biggest problems are problems for all of us. Not for capitalists/liberals/communist/blablabla only. Not for black/white/red/yellow people only. Everyone. The conditions have changed and absolutely logically the MINORITY of the people are in line with the new trends and feel the change of the wind. It is always like that. A new evolutionary trend both in physiology and behavior always starts from somewhere, thus it's abnormality.
Thus, if we keep on thinking only about ourselves (meaning me and my tribe) we will decline/die as a species because collectively we are doing absolutely stupid things with our life support system - the Earth. But on a family level things are OK, aren't they. The car is full with gasoline, there are wages, the kids will go to college. Perfect, right?
The intelligent people (on average) know/feel this and suddenly the evolutionary profitable behavior is to care for something bigger than yourself, because everything and everybody on this planet affects you directly in our age. It is just a fact. And thus, liberals are the next evolutionary step, not an evolutionary dead-end. The death will come if the majority of the people remain selfish conservatives and act like we are still living in tribes....the problem is that when this happens (I am a pessimist) there won't be any liberals around (they would have been killed already) to say "I told you so..."
In the long run either most of us will become "liberals", or we will die. Or there is a stable proportion liberals/conservatives....Evolution - the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth!
Disclaimer: I don't care which organization or person calls themselves liberal. I am not supporting any party/person with this post. Any ideology/program at all. I am not saying that conservatives do not care at all for the rest of society.
I am not saying anything at all apart from: intelligent people exhibit trends in their characters which are not evolutionary determined and/or enhanced (TFA) and my addendum (the conditions are changed in such way that this "abnormal" behavior will be likely rewarded with survival, whereas the old tribal conservatism will be punished with extinction).
Got Civ 5 few days ago. Some of the new ideas in the game are just brilliant. However:
1. Too short and easy - find a mod 2. Interface icons gigantic (bloody consoles!) - find a mod 3. Interface too poor (bloody consoles!) - find a mod.
Without mods I can play his game for a month (wage slave here, with wife). With mods - years!
The same goes for Rome-Total war (still playing the extended realism mod) Civ 4 - the same Oblivion (that was actually almost unplayable on PC without interface modes.)
However, I feel that developers should halve the price since the modders do most of the work these days. I mean Civ 5 was 45 Euros - for so much money they should have fixed at least the interface (actually there is a check box to force the game to use small icons, but it does not work...)
It is simple - you have an institution that has power over people. Such organization is immediately hijacked by careerists and overall bastards. Never mind what are the specifics - religious, economical or political structure - it happens all the time. Never mind how it started and what the intentions were. It's the power that people are attracted to. The power!! How much more simple I can tell it to you? ""To what end are they running this manipulation? "" - how could you write this at all? Why people become politicians? Why people strive like crazy to be in a organization that has power and control? You are on the top of the heap, man! Would you give away this power? You know, even the bloody Communism started with mainly idealists giving their lives for what they believed in. Guess what happen after they "won" in some countries and became institution (with absolute power)....read some history, man. This is like, the most basic trait of all humans....why are we even talking about this shit, I thought it was self evident!
Any religion has power, lots of power, because it answers (wrongly) to one of the most fundamental questions - the big WHAT and WHY stemming from mortality of all life. The simple software in our heads (the I) cannot contemplate the thought of its own non-existence. It is really a blind spot. Yet, we spent enormous amount of effort to look for those answers. And since the issue is soooo important many people cannot bear the fact that there is no answer yet (and there never might be). So they prefer wrong answer than no answer. Plus, I bet my life that if you bring , say 1000 children and do not make them believers, 990 will remain non-believers. Faith in a particular god is a bloody meme! Very catchy meme too. Formatting on very basic level, I would say assembler level! Begins from cradle.
Let's remove the economical and political power of the churches and see how many believers there will be in 3 generations time, eh? Faith is allowed and unrestricted, organized religion is not. Do we have a deal? Ohh, wait, that has already been done in the past 60 years in Eastern Europe. The result - 90% atheists. Gosh, those people must have been all mass murderers, baby killers and rapists!! They had no moral compass!!!! OMG!! Well....no. Apart from state sponsored killing and torturing (which is by no means prerogative of atheists, I hope you agree) society was every bit as moral as the "believers". Even more so, because you could not excuse criminal activities with faith (which happens all the time in the West and let's not go again to the issue of how hypocritical your western secularism is - the pope is not arrested so far by the criminal police). And we could not be made to kill for god.
Moreover, I am sure that this discussion will be much smaller than the others dedicated to Wikileaks. We will not see all the/. users who claimed that they are all for freedom and stuff, but that guy is a douche because he jeopardized people's lives come and say they were wrong! Where are you, people? I can't heaaaar you.....truth is so uninteresting, isn't it?
Quote: "Population overcrowding?" I assume you mean Malthusian predictions of doom, circa the 19th century. Thing is, that didn't account for the green revolution. Crop yields stayed ahead of population growth, but it took clever minds to develop the tech that allows this. And the problem is still there; not everyone has access to sufficient food and water (not just quantity, but also quality). Where you are now is likely a part of the world that's lucky enough to have endemic obesity instead of malnutrition. End quote
You know, the green revolution sucked. And still sucks. It produces tasteless fodder that can hardly be called food. In the West the last 2 generations were fed like this, so everyone now thinks this is normal. The fruits and vegetables are horrible. The meat is full of hormones. They fruits and vegetables contain so much less of the good nutrients because of the EXTREMELY accelerated growth (tomato growing in a week?!) that the healthy recommended dose per day is now doubled (I guess many know this simple fact). I was privileged to grow up in a backwater, non-developed nation where we fed all people (and exported a great deal) with what is now called "bio food" which at that time we called FOOD!!! Ever since I live in a developed nation the joy of food has all but disappeared. In Europe France, Italy, Spain and some of the eastern countries try to hold off, but against the cheap GM rubbish and pressure to decrease subsidies sooner or later they will fall. It is already happening.
All these BS about eating bugs, mass production of microbial based food, algae, all the GM fad (IMO, a massive, probably unrepairable crime against nature, humanity and common sense) - all this is utter failure. We don't need it. It creates new problems and only postpones the inevitable. We just need to control our numbers (and someone above was modded Troll for suggesting it?!). It's that simple. Then we can afford nearly endless wealth and possibilities for EVERYONE.
Read my lips: a finite, reasonable population in an (for all intents and purposes) infinite Universe - what's the problem? That is why I laughed at Hawkins statement that the aliens will plunder the Earth. What is to be found here that is not present on a lifeless rock somewhere in the Universe? Ohh, I know - what is to be found here is an unique, mega-rich biosphere, a perfect, sustainable life-support machine, the result of 4 billion years of evolution! That is precious. Not the copper and the oil. That. And it will not do for the aliens - most probably they have different metabolism and biochemistry. But some solutions might be useful for them too if on their planets nature did not "invent" them. And vice versa, of course. Just today, 18.10.2010, we lost 100 species due to our activities. Maybe in one of those species was the cure for cancer. We will never know.
Ahhh, the problem is that we need scarcity (the mere mentioning that on the scale of the Universe there is no scarcity if we keep our number in check brings feats of rage in every economist. Dumb-assess!) and we need Ponzi schemes (the whole economy of the world is a Ponzi, I dear anybody to say otherwise with a straight face) so some of us can make profit. And we expect the people who profit to dismantle the system only because their children will live in hell?! Yeha, right....
And I have trouble acknowledging a world where this happened in the first place!!! Why the advertisers went into this elaborate cheating just to ANNOY us?!?!?!?!?
Really, this is the best piece of legislation I have heard for a loooooong time! For once I hope that Europe will follow the US....
They pay the bill for the American protection. And have paid it since the beginning. Never mind what you here officially. They do. Billions every year. Ask an honest Japanese (or at least well informed) one.
Yet strangely, the great outbursts of secular thought began to surface in the West approx. 20 years after a very great historical event - the sacking of Constantinople by the Turks. There was a "tiny" difference between the East and West at the time. In Byzantium, the emperor was above the patriarch of the Orthodox church. In the west the pope was above all kings. This difference only led to huge differences in society. Byzantium comfortably preserved and enhanced the Hellenic culture whereas the West went into really dark ages.
By 8-9th century there is a funny illustration for this. In the west the current pope was criticizing some remote bishop that was teaching grammar to common people. In Byzantium the schools offered complete studies of algebra, astronomy, grammar, music, drama, philosophy. Just check the education of Constantine Cyril - the creator of first version of the Cyrillic alphabet and compare it with the "education" you could get in the West at the time.
Every scholar from Byzantium who could run when the Turks came, took all books they could and ran to the West. Most were met with great enthusiasm in Venice. One of the Bourges asked for the "Dialogs" on his dying bed, not the Bible.
I know that westerners don't like to remember that Byzantium and the neighboring (mostly) Slavic states enjoyed the Hellenic culture and secularism for all the time while the stakes were burning in the West and it took the collapse of the empire to disseminate the old teachings back into the west, but that is the truth.
After the sacking the pancake turn completely - the East collapsed under the ottoman empire and the west began the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
I don't see why you praise the clergy in the west - they opened their libraries because they HAD TO. If it was up to them they would keep the west uneducated until the end of times. Please, stop praising the church for achievements which are not hers or actions done only in the name of survival. Do you think that the Catholics readily agreed with Darwin? They had no choice, they were losing ground.
I disagree. What I see is that our civilization behaves like biology does not exists. All the numerous useful facts and predictions of evolution and ecology are constantly and often deliberately kept unintelligible to the general public. Biology is the queen of all sciences, hands down, and it is the most relevant to us as a species. Sure, physics, maths and inorganic chemistry are all very important and necessary foundation, but organic chemistry and biology are the real deal.
Almost nobody understands evolution properly. I am just back from lunch with my fantastically intelligent colleagues-physicists and they definitely did not know evolution. I mentioned to them that during the domestication of wolves as much as we selected them, they selected us too. They were baffled.
I said "Imagine that the wolves are coming closer to human settlement. The bravest wolves come the closest and try to pick some left overs. Eventually over time a mutually beneficial system emerges - we feed them, they help us hunting and guarding the settlement. We selected the wolves that are most-human friendly (least afraid of humans) and then encouraged their survival and procreation. All is well. Now, suppose that in the neighboring settlement a behavior "I hate/ I am afraid of wolves/dogs" occurs among the humans (genetically or socially determined or both). Well, this village will not have the benefit of guarding dogs against predators or other humans. They will suffer more casualties than the first village. Over time the difference becomes more and more significant until the "I hate/ I am afraid of dogs" behavior becomes negligibly small or vanishes. The net result - humans selected by wolves...even after this example which is quite clear IMO, I did not see the spark of enlightenment in the colleague's eyes. Even to this people - non religious, highly educated (from three different continents too), "selection" could only be a directed, conscious effort.
Here is a small story to illustrate:
The History of the Universe according to me (or why biology is the queen):
In the beginning it was physics - a set of forces and rules and looooong time. Everything that could happen, happened, so we got stars and most of the elements and all the possible inorganic components between those elements and all the possible products and processes of nuclear physics. That was the first of the "phase spaces" the Universe explored.
And among the elements there was carbon, which could chain with itself within certain limits of temperature and pressure. And it opened the second of the "phase spaces" - organic chemistry. And it was good, because the number of possible products and reactions was huge compared to inorganic chemistry and nuclear physics. Just the number of different chemical reactions between organic compounds in the "primal soup" of the Earth for a mere millions of years greatly exceeds the number of all atoms in the observable Universe. And since the time scales were still truly vast, anything that could happen, happened. And among the things that happened was the first immortal (but imperfect) replicator making copies of itself from components in its environment. And thus evolution began.
And once the so-called "nervous systems" of the living beings became so complex as to allow conciseness to emerge, an Observer of the Universe, the third "phase space" was accessible - the "phase space" of the mind, which is not even a material thing (as atoms) but "merely" a process carried out by a living, evolved beings.
And the complexity, intricacy and relevance (to us) of those phase spaces increases from the first to the second to the third. Thus biology, with its subsets like medicine, ecology, neurological sciences est. is the queen. And thus, it is no small matter at all when people are deliberately kept ignorant of it.
So, until society smartens up enough, we must challenge ignorance given half a chance. Our very survival is at stake!
I want perfect DRM! I really do. Give it to me, please! The one that is unbreakable, always works and never messes with the rest of your software. The same for movies and music please.
Until then, kiss my euros goodbye. I'll tell you why (deliberately skipping words, grammar Nazi's go home - have no time for this)
Bought new PC couple of months ago. All software on it is legal. Win 7 64 bit.
I am into single player games. I bought years ago Morrowing on the day of release (highest price). Bought it again as Game of the year edition. Under Win 7 I have no mouse cursor. One report online - someone with the same problem. No solution found. Game of the year edition distributed by Ubisoft. Tried to get support - disaster! The NA division directs me to UK, UK directs me to Holland, Holland does not reply, try UK and America again, no reply. More than 7 mails sent. Two copies of the same game unusable. Thank you!
Bought GTA 4 and Oblivion. GTA DRM more or less OK - annoying as hell, but at least it works. Oblivion - massive problems, fixed it after weeks of struggle. Game sucks - conversion from console horrible. Thankfully the online community has tons of mods to fix all issues (1.4 GB file with all textures remade for faster machines, mod to rescale the menus, so that they are not 20% of the screen per button - bloody TV resolution - this massive FREE support is only available for PC users). Thank you people, I love you! Developers - I hate you, lazy assess!
Went to the shop yesterday. Force unleashed - warning on the box that DRM might conflict with DVD burner. Screw you! Checked Starcraft II - requires constant online connection + the same warning about burner software. Screw you! And no, I will not pirate them even if it is available. I have just erased the developers names from my head. Buy Lucas, Buy Blizzard!
Blue ray - why it takes 2-3 min to start a movie on a 300 euro Blue ray player? Online content, checking the DRM? Screw you, I will never plug the player to the network, not after reading about firmware upgrades that come with 100 page EULA that removes the last remnants of my rights as a customer. BTW, why it is that I get blur on the 400 Hz plasma? Is that the grand new High Def experience? I regret ever buying it. Other people have exactly the same problem with all kinds of combos player+TV. BTW, I own about 500 DVD+Blue rays, I think the industry should sent some flowers home....instead they are obstructing me of making back ups and want me to spend another 5-6K euros to renew my collection? What is next - spent it again to convert to 3D? SCREW YOU!
Console - there is one and only game I wish to play on a console - GT. Bought the best steering wheel in the world. Had PS2 with GT4. Will I move to PS3 + GT5? Never! Sony also does not exist for me, not after the root kit.
Music - Apple and their crappy mp3 can go to the moon. Never owned anything from them and will never do. Everyone who claims there is no difference between FLAC and MP3 should have their ears checked. Or buy better headphones. Why do I have expensive home sound system - to play 256kbit MP3 on it? Yhea, right! I do my own MP3 and FLAC files from the discs I buy! That is why I have legally purchased the necessary software to back up and convert, with which the DRM of most games conflict.
So, from now on, there will be no purchases of any sort. I think I have all the movies, music and games I will ever need. I go underground - back everything up, convert to few different standard, back up again on a different location and say good buy to all developers and artists. Care to come along?
From now on, only books will be bought. And they can kiss my ass with the e-books as well. No monitoring on what I read and what I do, thank you very much! No obstructions to sharing books.
In conclusion - developers and distributors - either fix your DRM once and forever or die!!!
What was the story of the old ones....let me quote Lucas himself - He was looking for the most common story in all cultures and was consulting scientist dealing with world mythology daily. So he showed us the oldest story in the world - a hero, coming of age; evil father; damsel in distress; old wise hermit; mythic force. How original!!
Lucas never wrote good dialog. It is a mercy that he gave 5 and 6 to other directors. If you can exercise supreme discipline and watch the old ones like you have never seen them before you will not find them interesting at all. I mean, the special effects of the original trilogy are laughable, but for the time they were the best there is. What made the old ones such a phenomenon? The story? The actors? The dialog? No. The vision - that was it, and the special effects.
As for the midichlorians - I though this is a stroke or genius!! Do you know anything about the mitochondria and its role in the cell? Do you know that there are some indications that the mitochondria was in the beginning a symbiont organism with the proto cells? Man, if there is a "Force" out there in the Universe it must stem from living organisms...
Ahh, but you see, as it was pointed in the Sector General novels, every civilization calls themselves "human". Not using the same word, naturally, but a word that translates as "human" in English. It's about the not-so-surprising arrogance of any species who is the only one on a given planet that is "sentient". Every such species will distinguish itself with a special word compare to the rest. As in "we are humans, everything else is either animal, plant or microorganism"
But seriously, I get your point. But even that is not sure - convergent evolution might mean that some of the aliens might be anthropoids with heads, limbs (4 like us, why not?) and so on...after all, the laws of nature do not allow all possible “engineering solutions” to be realized; some of the solutions will be less practical than others or not work at all and get deleted from the gene pool.
Say, a creature moves through the water (there is direction of movement) and its shape is like a cigar. There is an obvious distinction between both “ends” of the cigar – the end that propagates through the water first will start accumulating nerve and sensory “equipment” and will become “head”.
Slashdot Mirror
"We have a problem in this country (the USA), where HUGE numbers of people are putting in 40-60 hours and not able to get by. I have friends who work that much and still need assistance with their heating bills and food. That's a problem."
Welcome to the club! We have no shirts but our manifesto is this:
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
Cheer up!
If you live in Europe, you will notice that the winter has (for the third time in a row) surprised both business and authorities. As a result:
1. You can go to work late and excuse yourself with the transport system. /. but still...)
2. Staying more at home means on average more sex (yhea I know, this is
3. You save money by not going on that Christmas shopping spree (in another country), because there are no flights.
4. You can have endless fun poking overzealous environmentalist by asking in true Fox news style "is this the global warming?"
So, cheer up!
It's ridiculous indeed.
Without him there would be other excuse or no excuse at all. So you are advocating that WE should take anything obediently, without fighting back because THEY might beat US even more ferociously, excusing themselves with OUR disobedience which is there in the first place because of THEIR actions?!?!?!?. I fail to see any reason here....
But you will soon give the nukes to a deranged woman, more dangerous and foolish than all teenagers combined. Sarah Palin, if you are wondering what I am talking about....
Believe, you say. Like the Iranian president who went to war because he got a message from "beyond the stars" Ohh, wait...
Don't go there! This morning on the BBC they already said that because of the cyber attacks and counterattacks on Wikileaks the governments will impose draconian Internet control and we will all suffer.
Do I need to spell out the fundamental, barefaced, arrogant lie in this statement? Hint: Internet control is a hot topic (as any /.-er knows) for how long already?
Let’s now blame the terrorist Assange for the next Internet patriotic act. Well, done media spin doctors...
But you have one requirement which you cannot avoid. The building material should be able to produce vast array of different structures. Complexity is the key. Apart from carbon there a few other elements that can form stable long chains with itself, but the conditions needed will disfavor all the rest that is needed. Like a solvent, for instance (water).
I sound like a carbon chauvinist, but so far it seems that chemistry agrees.
Easy-peas.
-WHY?
-Because.
I am not trying to be smart or funny here. I sincerely think that the WHY question will turn out to be meaningless and thus the answer I give is the most appropriate one. Actually no, it is not meaningless but the real answer does not satisfy us (because we are fools that think that complexity must arise from INTENTION). The answer is thus: because under those conditions the following forces arise and the following interactions which in time lead to.(insert a few thousand pages of info here).......stars.....inorganic ......organic...... chemistry....live....evolution......observer.
Do not forget that with language you can ask meaningless questions. Whatever we can prove in the future, even if we know EXACTLY how the Universe came to be, you can ALWAYS ask "What was before?" "Why". And you run into the infinite regress problem to boot. Game over. So simply, save you breath and energy for question that really matter.
No answer to a meaningless or unprovable question is much better than a false answer. Because the issue is so important for humans (for whatever reason), people believing in different false answer will fight ferociously over who is right. According to some philosophers that is the main reason we fight over religion so much. We fight to make people believe in OUR false answer. because there can be only one correct answer (or so we believe).
Obligatory v2:
Android (paranoid): Think of a number
User: Five
Android: Wrong. See...
User: Ohhh
Do they really recognize themselves in a mirror? I though that this ability is an indication of a certain degree of consciousness. Being aware of the difference between "me" and the rest of the world.
AFIK, humans below age of 2 do not recognize their image in a mirror. The test I saw is simple - put a small spot on the cheek of the kid, put it in front of a mirror and ask it to remove the spot from the image. They either reach for the mirror or directly reach for their cheeks.
Adult apes recognize themselves too, not sure about monkeys.
It has always been my speculation that animals have degrees of consciousness , that it is not just zero or one, i.e either not conscious of fully conscious.
Interesting stuff!
Stop the depletion of the seas due to industrial fishing (not to mention the "research" on whales) and then I can consider you a serious country!
Of course, industrial fishing is not practiced only by Japan. It is utterly unbelievable - the amount of dead creatures which we don't use and throw back into the water (dead) can be up to 90% of all there is in the net!! Why no one is screaming bloody murder! Why do we tolerate this amount of BS in the world? At the moment the 20 monkeys are spending our money to chat about currency wars and printing money by the Feds, while at the same time the oceans are empty.
I am sorry, but just like one of my old post about the amazingly energy efficient jet engines (what's the profit, I asked - we will just fly more frequent so any "saving" will be immediately canceled by increased consumption and increased population) I have to say it again - what's the profit? Why the fuss? Why do we even bother to listen to this drivel? It only gives the illusion of safety and mislead us to believe that someone actually has an objective of making sustainable economy. The objective is always the same - money and power. Without real paradigm shift all efforts are meaningless.
The system we are living in encourages destructive behavior; anybody who slows down the rate of destruction is immediately in losing position since success is measured by the things consumed and accumulated. So, we are like kids who stuff themselves uncontrollably with sweets. All will get sick at the end (in our case die rather than being sick), but while there is still candy everyone keeps eating as fast as they can, because otherwise "the other kid will eat more and be stronger than me".
Stop wasting resources to tell us how we should not waste them, while at the same time saying that any decrease in consumption leads to economy collapse.
I wonder why people keep bickering about insignificant things (not specifically here, but in general), keep on discussing forever "in what colour to paint the ship, while it is sinking?" Another analogy - we are needlessly throwing in the garbage bin packs food that contains say 1000 calories per pack, but we build special trash bin (using LOTS of resources for R&D) which converts into useful energy small portion of the energy released by the impact between the food and the container. WOW, we are getting back 20 calories, otherwise lost in heat! We are going green! Youhoooo!
I am speechless by all this. Such stupidity surely will be edited by natural selection. Can't wait...
Have you ever read the interpretation of the Fall by Daniel Quinn, the author of "Ishmael"?
I find his idea the most reasonable and plausible one I have ever heard.
His speculation is that the story of the Fall was not created by "civilized" people, but by their hunter-gatherer neighbors (later it was incorporated into our mythology) in an attempt to explain the seemingly illogical behavior that the civilized exhibited, namely – “Our way is the right way to live! Everything that eats our food must die! Everything that eats the food of our food must die! Everyone who is not like us must be converted or die!”
I hope the above statements do not need elaboration – the process of conversion and/or extermination is now finally coming to a closure – all indigenous people are either “civilized” or dead! I am not counting a few thousand “savages” scattered around – now we try to preserve them (at least up to the point when we find resources on their land – check the mass suicides of “savages” in Brazil in the 90-ies).
Those gatherers saw the benefits of our system – growth and power.
They also saw some of the drawbacks – lots of work (relative to their lifestyle), just to stay alive.
They also reasoned about our motives and decided that those strange people have acquired a special knowledge – the knowledge of who lives and who dies (good and evil). This knowledge is for the gods only because what is good for one is evil for another, thus only the gods have sufficient wisdom to decide.
Thus, Adam (meaning “man”, not “male”), seduced by Eve (meaning “life”, i.e. growth) ate the fruit and acquired the knowledge of good and evil (who lives and who dies). For that he was banished and punished to sweat all his life (manufacture food with lots of work, rather than just take the food that grows around) and he was cursed to suffer and eventually, die (basic stuff – everything that grows without limit, dies).
Quinn claims that if the legend of the Fall was created by civilized people, the knowledge of good and evil would be a gift from god, not a curse! Because, after all, it is because of this knowledge that we were able to build the whole civilization and that is praiseworthy, no? This knowledge is our greatest power; it is not a curse, it's a blessing! Of course man's destiny is to be civilization builder, right?
People, people, hear me out. The article about liberals and atheists states that : intelligent people on average exhibit trends in their characters which are not evolutionary determined and/or enhanced.
Anything here about US congress? About Obama? Big/small government? NO. Read below, I hope I can make my point clear:
Grossly exaggerated support example: Conservative cares about himself and his family. Very normal and understandable attitude, in line with evolution. Attention: in line with evolution so far - tribal life and early civilization! Conditions have changed - mature, technologically advanced, immensely powerful civilization is something quite different. If there is any meaningful criteria for "success" in Nature it is the ability to react accordingly to changing environment.
Liberal can think for the whole species, the whole community of life, sometimes disregarding personal and family gain. It's pretty abstract to care about billions people to whom you have no genetic connection whatsoever (extra point: studies also show that it is usually childless people who overly care for others - they do not have to conform with the status quo to get their genes procreated since they have elected not to procreate .Thus they are freer of constrains to put their lives in danger or inconvenience, which is always what you get for being truly forward-thinking or trying to change the status quo.)
OK, so liberals are dead-end in evolution, right? Less children, no moral support via some belief in some god, caring for everyone.....No again.
I would argue that at this stage of the development of civilization our biggest problems are problems for all of us. Not for capitalists/liberals/communist/blablabla only. Not for black/white/red/yellow people only. Everyone. The conditions have changed and absolutely logically the MINORITY of the people are in line with the new trends and feel the change of the wind. It is always like that. A new evolutionary trend both in physiology and behavior always starts from somewhere, thus it's abnormality.
Thus, if we keep on thinking only about ourselves (meaning me and my tribe) we will decline/die as a species because collectively we are doing absolutely stupid things with our life support system - the Earth. But on a family level things are OK, aren't they. The car is full with gasoline, there are wages, the kids will go to college. Perfect, right?
The intelligent people (on average) know/feel this and suddenly the evolutionary profitable behavior is to care for something bigger than yourself, because everything and everybody on this planet affects you directly in our age. It is just a fact. And thus, liberals are the next evolutionary step, not an evolutionary dead-end. The death will come if the majority of the people remain selfish conservatives and act like we are still living in tribes....the problem is that when this happens (I am a pessimist) there won't be any liberals around (they would have been killed already) to say "I told you so..."
In the long run either most of us will become "liberals", or we will die. Or there is a stable proportion liberals/conservatives....Evolution - the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth!
Disclaimer: I don't care which organization or person calls themselves liberal. I am not supporting any party/person with this post. Any ideology/program at all. I am not saying that conservatives do not care at all for the rest of society.
I am not saying anything at all apart from: intelligent people exhibit trends in their characters which are not evolutionary determined and/or enhanced (TFA) and my addendum (the conditions are changed in such way that this "abnormal" behavior will be likely rewarded with survival, whereas the old tribal conservatism will be punished with extinction).
One word: mods!
Got Civ 5 few days ago. Some of the new ideas in the game are just brilliant. However:
1. Too short and easy - find a mod
2. Interface icons gigantic (bloody consoles!) - find a mod
3. Interface too poor (bloody consoles!) - find a mod.
Without mods I can play his game for a month (wage slave here, with wife). With mods - years!
The same goes for Rome-Total war (still playing the extended realism mod)
Civ 4 - the same
Oblivion (that was actually almost unplayable on PC without interface modes.)
However, I feel that developers should halve the price since the modders do most of the work these days. I mean Civ 5 was 45 Euros - for so much money they should have fixed at least the interface (actually there is a check box to force the game to use small icons, but it does not work...)
It is simple - you have an institution that has power over people. Such organization is immediately hijacked by careerists and overall bastards. Never mind what are the specifics - religious, economical or political structure - it happens all the time. Never mind how it started and what the intentions were. It's the power that people are attracted to. The power!! How much more simple I can tell it to you? ""To what end are they running this manipulation? "" - how could you write this at all? Why people become politicians? Why people strive like crazy to be in a organization that has power and control? You are on the top of the heap, man! Would you give away this power? You know, even the bloody Communism started with mainly idealists giving their lives for what they believed in. Guess what happen after they "won" in some countries and became institution (with absolute power)....read some history, man. This is like, the most basic trait of all humans....why are we even talking about this shit, I thought it was self evident!
Any religion has power, lots of power, because it answers (wrongly) to one of the most fundamental questions - the big WHAT and WHY stemming from mortality of all life. The simple software in our heads (the I) cannot contemplate the thought of its own non-existence. It is really a blind spot. Yet, we spent enormous amount of effort to look for those answers. And since the issue is soooo important many people cannot bear the fact that there is no answer yet (and there never might be). So they prefer wrong answer than no answer. Plus, I bet my life that if you bring , say 1000 children and do not make them believers, 990 will remain non-believers. Faith in a particular god is a bloody meme! Very catchy meme too. Formatting on very basic level, I would say assembler level! Begins from cradle.
Let's remove the economical and political power of the churches and see how many believers there will be in 3 generations time, eh? Faith is allowed and unrestricted, organized religion is not. Do we have a deal? Ohh, wait, that has already been done in the past 60 years in Eastern Europe. The result - 90% atheists. Gosh, those people must have been all mass murderers, baby killers and rapists!! They had no moral compass!!!! OMG!! Well....no. Apart from state sponsored killing and torturing (which is by no means prerogative of atheists, I hope you agree) society was every bit as moral as the "believers". Even more so, because you could not excuse criminal activities with faith (which happens all the time in the West and let's not go again to the issue of how hypocritical your western secularism is - the pope is not arrested so far by the criminal police). And we could not be made to kill for god.
I hope I've made the point clear.
Moreover, I am sure that this discussion will be much smaller than the others dedicated to Wikileaks. We will not see all the /. users who claimed that they are all for freedom and stuff, but that guy is a douche because he jeopardized people's lives come and say they were wrong! Where are you, people? I can't heaaaar you.....truth is so uninteresting, isn't it?
Quote:
"Population overcrowding?" I assume you mean Malthusian predictions of doom, circa the 19th century. Thing is, that didn't account for the green revolution. Crop yields stayed ahead of population growth, but it took clever minds to develop the tech that allows this. And the problem is still there; not everyone has access to sufficient food and water (not just quantity, but also quality). Where you are now is likely a part of the world that's lucky enough to have endemic obesity instead of malnutrition.
End quote
You know, the green revolution sucked. And still sucks. It produces tasteless fodder that can hardly be called food. In the West the last 2 generations were fed like this, so everyone now thinks this is normal. The fruits and vegetables are horrible. The meat is full of hormones. They fruits and vegetables contain so much less of the good nutrients because of the EXTREMELY accelerated growth (tomato growing in a week?!) that the healthy recommended dose per day is now doubled (I guess many know this simple fact). I was privileged to grow up in a backwater, non-developed nation where we fed all people (and exported a great deal) with what is now called "bio food" which at that time we called FOOD!!! Ever since I live in a developed nation the joy of food has all but disappeared. In Europe France, Italy, Spain and some of the eastern countries try to hold off, but against the cheap GM rubbish and pressure to decrease subsidies sooner or later they will fall. It is already happening.
All these BS about eating bugs, mass production of microbial based food, algae, all the GM fad (IMO, a massive, probably unrepairable crime against nature, humanity and common sense) - all this is utter failure. We don't need it. It creates new problems and only postpones the inevitable. We just need to control our numbers (and someone above was modded Troll for suggesting it?!). It's that simple. Then we can afford nearly endless wealth and possibilities for EVERYONE.
Read my lips: a finite, reasonable population in an (for all intents and purposes) infinite Universe - what's the problem? That is why I laughed at Hawkins statement that the aliens will plunder the Earth. What is to be found here that is not present on a lifeless rock somewhere in the Universe? Ohh, I know - what is to be found here is an unique, mega-rich biosphere, a perfect, sustainable life-support machine, the result of 4 billion years of evolution! That is precious. Not the copper and the oil. That. And it will not do for the aliens - most probably they have different metabolism and biochemistry. But some solutions might be useful for them too if on their planets nature did not "invent" them. And vice versa, of course. Just today, 18.10.2010, we lost 100 species due to our activities. Maybe in one of those species was the cure for cancer. We will never know.
Ahhh, the problem is that we need scarcity (the mere mentioning that on the scale of the Universe there is no scarcity if we keep our number in check brings feats of rage in every economist. Dumb-assess!) and we need Ponzi schemes (the whole economy of the world is a Ponzi, I dear anybody to say otherwise with a straight face) so some of us can make profit. And we expect the people who profit to dismantle the system only because their children will live in hell?! Yeha, right....
Trantor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trantor] would be even more grandeur - a roof over the whole planet. Total climate control - great!
The tiny writing: Azomov actually mentioned that only the food supply of Trantor is delivered by 20 farming planets!!!
And I have trouble acknowledging a world where this happened in the first place!!! Why the advertisers went into this elaborate cheating just to ANNOY us?!?!?!?!?
Really, this is the best piece of legislation I have heard for a loooooong time! For once I hope that Europe will follow the US....
They pay the bill for the American protection. And have paid it since the beginning. Never mind what you here officially. They do. Billions every year. Ask an honest Japanese (or at least well informed) one.
Yet strangely, the great outbursts of secular thought began to surface in the West approx. 20 years after a very great historical event - the sacking of Constantinople by the Turks. There was a "tiny" difference between the East and West at the time. In Byzantium, the emperor was above the patriarch of the Orthodox church. In the west the pope was above all kings. This difference only led to huge differences in society. Byzantium comfortably preserved and enhanced the Hellenic culture whereas the West went into really dark ages.
By 8-9th century there is a funny illustration for this. In the west the current pope was criticizing some remote bishop that was teaching grammar to common people. In Byzantium the schools offered complete studies of algebra, astronomy, grammar, music, drama, philosophy. Just check the education of Constantine Cyril - the creator of first version of the Cyrillic alphabet and compare it with the "education" you could get in the West at the time.
Every scholar from Byzantium who could run when the Turks came, took all books they could and ran to the West. Most were met with great enthusiasm in Venice. One of the Bourges asked for the "Dialogs" on his dying bed, not the Bible.
I know that westerners don't like to remember that Byzantium and the neighboring (mostly) Slavic states enjoyed the Hellenic culture and secularism for all the time while the stakes were burning in the West and it took the collapse of the empire to disseminate the old teachings back into the west, but that is the truth.
After the sacking the pancake turn completely - the East collapsed under the ottoman empire and the west began the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.
I don't see why you praise the clergy in the west - they opened their libraries because they HAD TO. If it was up to them they would keep the west uneducated until the end of times. Please, stop praising the church for achievements which are not hers or actions done only in the name of survival. Do you think that the Catholics readily agreed with Darwin? They had no choice, they were losing ground.
I disagree. What I see is that our civilization behaves like biology does not exists. All the numerous useful facts and predictions of evolution and ecology are constantly and often deliberately kept unintelligible to the general public. Biology is the queen of all sciences, hands down, and it is the most relevant to us as a species. Sure, physics, maths and inorganic chemistry are all very important and necessary foundation, but organic chemistry and biology are the real deal.
Almost nobody understands evolution properly. I am just back from lunch with my fantastically intelligent colleagues-physicists and they definitely did not know evolution. I mentioned to them that during the domestication of wolves as much as we selected them, they selected us too. They were baffled.
I said "Imagine that the wolves are coming closer to human settlement. The bravest wolves come the closest and try to pick some left overs. Eventually over time a mutually beneficial system emerges - we feed them, they help us hunting and guarding the settlement. We selected the wolves that are most-human friendly (least afraid of humans) and then encouraged their survival and procreation. All is well. Now, suppose that in the neighboring settlement a behavior "I hate/ I am afraid of wolves/dogs" occurs among the humans (genetically or socially determined or both). Well, this village will not have the benefit of guarding dogs against predators or other humans. They will suffer more casualties than the first village. Over time the difference becomes more and more significant until the "I hate/ I am afraid of dogs" behavior becomes negligibly small or vanishes. The net result - humans selected by wolves...even after this example which is quite clear IMO, I did not see the spark of enlightenment in the colleague's eyes. Even to this people - non religious, highly educated (from three different continents too), "selection" could only be a directed, conscious effort.
Here is a small story to illustrate:
The History of the Universe according to me (or why biology is the queen):
In the beginning it was physics - a set of forces and rules and looooong time. Everything that could happen, happened, so we got stars and most of the elements and all the possible inorganic components between those elements and all the possible products and processes of nuclear physics. That was the first of the "phase spaces" the Universe explored.
And among the elements there was carbon, which could chain with itself within certain limits of temperature and pressure. And it opened the second of the "phase spaces" - organic chemistry. And it was good, because the number of possible products and reactions was huge compared to inorganic chemistry and nuclear physics. Just the number of different chemical reactions between organic compounds in the "primal soup" of the Earth for a mere millions of years greatly exceeds the number of all atoms in the observable Universe. And since the time scales were still truly vast, anything that could happen, happened. And among the things that happened was the first immortal (but imperfect) replicator making copies of itself from components in its environment. And thus evolution began.
And once the so-called "nervous systems" of the living beings became so complex as to allow conciseness to emerge, an Observer of the Universe, the third "phase space" was accessible - the "phase space" of the mind, which is not even a material thing (as atoms) but "merely" a process carried out by a living, evolved beings.
And the complexity, intricacy and relevance (to us) of those phase spaces increases from the first to the second to the third. Thus biology, with its subsets like medicine, ecology, neurological sciences est. is the queen. And thus, it is no small matter at all when people are deliberately kept ignorant of it.
So, until society smartens up enough, we must challenge ignorance given half a chance. Our very survival is at stake!
I want perfect DRM! I really do. Give it to me, please! The one that is unbreakable, always works and never messes with the rest of your software. The same for movies and music please.
Until then, kiss my euros goodbye. I'll tell you why (deliberately skipping words, grammar Nazi's go home - have no time for this)
Bought new PC couple of months ago. All software on it is legal. Win 7 64 bit.
I am into single player games. I bought years ago Morrowing on the day of release (highest price). Bought it again as Game of the year edition. Under Win 7 I have no mouse cursor. One report online - someone with the same problem. No solution found. Game of the year edition distributed by Ubisoft. Tried to get support - disaster! The NA division directs me to UK, UK directs me to Holland, Holland does not reply, try UK and America again, no reply. More than 7 mails sent. Two copies of the same game unusable. Thank you!
Bought GTA 4 and Oblivion. GTA DRM more or less OK - annoying as hell, but at least it works. Oblivion - massive problems, fixed it after weeks of struggle. Game sucks - conversion from console horrible. Thankfully the online community has tons of mods to fix all issues (1.4 GB file with all textures remade for faster machines, mod to rescale the menus, so that they are not 20% of the screen per button - bloody TV resolution - this massive FREE support is only available for PC users). Thank you people, I love you! Developers - I hate you, lazy assess!
Went to the shop yesterday. Force unleashed - warning on the box that DRM might conflict with DVD burner. Screw you! Checked Starcraft II - requires constant online connection + the same warning about burner software. Screw you! And no, I will not pirate them even if it is available. I have just erased the developers names from my head. Buy Lucas, Buy Blizzard!
Blue ray - why it takes 2-3 min to start a movie on a 300 euro Blue ray player? Online content, checking the DRM? Screw you, I will never plug the player to the network, not after reading about firmware upgrades that come with 100 page EULA that removes the last remnants of my rights as a customer. BTW, why it is that I get blur on the 400 Hz plasma? Is that the grand new High Def experience? I regret ever buying it. Other people have exactly the same problem with all kinds of combos player+TV.
BTW, I own about 500 DVD+Blue rays, I think the industry should sent some flowers home....instead they are obstructing me of making back ups and want me to spend another 5-6K euros to renew my collection? What is next - spent it again to convert to 3D? SCREW YOU!
Console - there is one and only game I wish to play on a console - GT. Bought the best steering wheel in the world. Had PS2 with GT4. Will I move to PS3 + GT5? Never! Sony also does not exist for me, not after the root kit.
Music - Apple and their crappy mp3 can go to the moon. Never owned anything from them and will never do. Everyone who claims there is no difference between FLAC and MP3 should have their ears checked. Or buy better headphones. Why do I have expensive home sound system - to play 256kbit MP3 on it? Yhea, right!
I do my own MP3 and FLAC files from the discs I buy! That is why I have legally purchased the necessary software to back up and convert, with which the DRM of most games conflict.
So, from now on, there will be no purchases of any sort. I think I have all the movies, music and games I will ever need. I go underground - back everything up, convert to few different standard, back up again on a different location and say good buy to all developers and artists. Care to come along?
From now on, only books will be bought. And they can kiss my ass with the e-books as well. No monitoring on what I read and what I do, thank you very much! No obstructions to sharing books.
In conclusion - developers and distributors - either fix your DRM once and forever or die!!!
What was the story of the old ones....let me quote Lucas himself - He was looking for the most common story in all cultures and was consulting scientist dealing with world mythology daily. So he showed us the oldest story in the world - a hero, coming of age; evil father; damsel in distress; old wise hermit; mythic force. How original!!
Lucas never wrote good dialog. It is a mercy that he gave 5 and 6 to other directors. If you can exercise supreme discipline and watch the old ones like you have never seen them before you will not find them interesting at all. I mean, the special effects of the original trilogy are laughable, but for the time they were the best there is. What made the old ones such a phenomenon? The story? The actors? The dialog? No. The vision - that was it, and the special effects.
As for the midichlorians - I though this is a stroke or genius!! Do you know anything about the mitochondria and its role in the cell? Do you know that there are some indications that the mitochondria was in the beginning a symbiont organism with the proto cells? Man, if there is a "Force" out there in the Universe it must stem from living organisms...
Ahh, but you see, as it was pointed in the Sector General novels, every civilization calls themselves "human". Not using the same word, naturally, but a word that translates as "human" in English. It's about the not-so-surprising arrogance of any species who is the only one on a given planet that is "sentient". Every such species will distinguish itself with a special word compare to the rest. As in "we are humans, everything else is either animal, plant or microorganism"
But seriously, I get your point. But even that is not sure - convergent evolution might mean that some of the aliens might be anthropoids with heads, limbs (4 like us, why not?) and so on...after all, the laws of nature do not allow all possible “engineering solutions” to be realized; some of the solutions will be less practical than others or not work at all and get deleted from the gene pool.
Say, a creature moves through the water (there is direction of movement) and its shape is like a cigar. There is an obvious distinction between both “ends” of the cigar – the end that propagates through the water first will start accumulating nerve and sensory “equipment” and will become “head”.