I was never a huge Star Trek fan, so perhaps my opinion is worthless, but I really liked the proposed reboot of the Star Trek universe that Straczynski and Zabel envisioned, and wrote a treatment for. I think it's worth a read and consideration.
I hear that. And I admit it's a little sad that we'll probably never meet other lifeforms out there.
But at the same time, I think it's an infinite regress. Meaning we humans have already explored beyond our neighborhoods, our countries, our continents, our cultures. We've found strange and wonderous creatures in environments we cannot live in. We've gone further than anything else we know of. But we want more. I think if we could travel to other stars, we'd still want "more" just as much. If we knew a thousand other races on other planets, we'd be just as curious as to what was just beyond our reach.
I'm not immune to that feeling, and it's probably important for us to keep that desire to some degree. But being aware of it helps me to soften it, and to instead take more pleasure looking deeper into that which is right in front of me, and working towwards discoveries that are a little more likely to be within my reach.
My guess is that most people who claim to believe in strong copyrights are violating copyright. It's tough not to at some point: ever made a mix tape? Played music where lots of people could hear it? Photocopied a bit of a magazine or book? Used an image on your desktop or website when you weren't clear on the source? All questionable actions in a strong copyright world.
Ah well... people are pretty comfortable with hypocrisy. Never stopped anyone from badmouthing pornography either.
If it's any consolation: I know what you're talking about with the emptiness, but I think it can fade over time if you take on a new perspective. Lately I've been realizing that we are each of us, essentially, a god. In that we are self aware, willful, intelligent, ambitious, and powerful; something that is seemingly rare in the universe. We are as close to a "god" as this universe might ever give rise to. What is lacking about our natural world that would be somehow better if it were supernatural or spiritual? No matter what the environment, there are going to be some behaviors that make for a consistent reality. What is not magic about ours?
I realize I'm getting a bit too abstract here, but I think it's worth poking at: would any god, existing for all time, with self awareness, will, intelligence, ambition, and power feel so much different than we? What would his purpose be? What would he make of his existence? And the biblical account of how his infinite power brings about nothing but pain and suffering, and mistake after mistake, does anything speak more clearly of the human condition? And when all god wants is to be, in simple terms, loved and accepted?
I sometimes look at each person and think "you are a god" and I become immediately fascinated with what they choose to do with their self awareness, will, intelligence, ambition, and power. Some of them choose to deny it and hand the power to someone else. Some of them abuse the power. Some of them struggle with the responsibility. Some of them break down and lay on the streets, confused as hell.
Another thing to consider is that the sadness and emptiness are inescapable: my mother is the most devout spiritual Christian as one can be. Yet she is plagued by depression and overcome with emotion even more than I am. She breaks down when people die, even though she professes belief in a beautiful afterlife. I have no such comfort yet I seem more at peace with death than her. It actually makes me wonder if perhaps an unshakable belief in the spirit world is in fact just a sign that you are more terrified of this being it. In which case, it's not so much that the believe wholeheartedly in god, but that they are incapable of accepting life without him -- even though they fear that it is true. A form of denial perhaps?
In the end, I don't try to change people's beliefs. If someone feels their life is a better one with a belief in god, who am I to say otherwise? I think that mine is better without that belief, but it is a hard road and yes, I do feel hollow sometimes realizing that there's nobody above me to tell me what is really right or wrong. It's a little like being god.
I just spent some time working in the disadvantaged areas of South Africa, and so I've formed a bit of affection for the nation and its people. While on the face of it I think anyone messing with these developing nations as they try to get their footing is about a pure definition of evil as can be had, I'm not aware how much this one matters. I mean, fsck SBC -- of all the people I met in South Africa, not a one of the blacks had a home phone line. But on the other hand they did all have cell phones. Vodacom and MTN were the major players, and had achieved amazing penetration -- on par with US cell phone penetration, but in an area where people still live 3 generations in a tiny 2 bedroom home.
The only serious downside to having no landlines was a lack of internet connectivity -- nothing fills the early internet dialup niche: there's no flat-fee land line plans, and cell phone internet access is fairly expensive (though cheaper than in the US, I believe). So very few people are connected to the internet if they're lucky enough to have a computer. That is unfortunate. But in the end the people I met are not seriously hampered by the situation. They're amazingly adaptable, cheerful, and texting like crazy:)
Anyways; good luck to SA. I hope to go again some day.
I think you'd be surprised: without God you'd probably act pretty much the same. I don't believe in God any more, but most people describe me as a very nice person. I'm at least as nice as I was when I did believe in God. Fact is, from a purely selfish perspective, being nice is a great strategy for living a good life. That's not consciously _why_ I do it; I'm nice because I like to be nice. But I suppose on some deeper level the reason I like to be nice is because it makes me feel good. I think that regardless of religious beliefs and ideas about crime and punishment, this is what really makes people behave: because behaving is ultimately good for you.
On the flip side, I certainly don't think belief in God prevents people from doing bad things: most criminals believe in god (just as most non-criminals do). It seems to have little effect on behavior. People do what they want and then find a rationalization.
I guess my general question to this kind of thing is: if someone somehow disproved the existence of god, would you be able to accept it? I don't think it's possible to truly disprove god, but just theoretically? Can you imagine letting it go?
I ask because I think that all of my most deeply held beliefs could be turned over if someone showed me a convincing proof. I've let go of dear convictions before in the face of strong evidence, and I think that is what any true explorer of life has to do. You may be able to hold on to a belief in god your whole life, and that's fine, but if you can't even imagine letting it go then you've crossed into irrationality.
Having broken my arm in a human vs. human match, I can assure you that you don't get a clear signal when your bone is about to break. You're pushing and then you hear it snap.
About three years ago a friend and I were arm wrestling at the office and I broke my arm. Made a sound like cracking a yardstick over your knee. Had to get surgery and a metal plate installed. Still have a pretty crazy scar from that. It's cool though because he's bought me enough beers to more than make up for it.
We were guys in good shape, but neither he nor I were strangely strong people. Turns out it's not that hard to break the humerus if you twist it the wrong way. Generally if you're arm wrestling you should be positioned so that you're doing a curl, and putting the stress along the length of the bone. If you are using a twisting motion you're doing it wrong: if you're reasonably strong and you push as hard as you can, you very well might snap your arm.
I think I may have had a hairline fracture beforehand from some aggressive rock climbing a few weeks earlier, during which I experienced some pain in that arm. But even in that case, the cause was still my own muscle strength against my own bone strength, and the bone lost. That worried me so I had a bone density scan after the break. And I came up completely normal.
The scar always gets questions. I've tried telling tall tales and such (a knife fight! no, alligator wrestling! no, a cybernetic bicep implant!), but nothing gets as much of a reaction as the truth. Only problem is people seem to then assume that it means I'm defective for fragile or something. But here's my take: if you've ever arm wrestled and lost without breaking your arm, you're a pussy. Because you just gave up.
Sorry, but there will be no successful public argument made with logic on this topic in the next 20 years at least. By asking the question you set up the perfect opportunity for them to rally the troops behind the Word Of God. The candidates' ability to reject facts in favor of the bible will only boost the confidence of the fundamentalists. It will remind them how persecuted their beliefs are, and how they desperately need to keep someone in office who understands their point of view. Which is this: the bible trumps everything, end of story.
I'm not saying it's impossible to change people's minds -- it is. I used to be a fundamentalist anti-evolution person myself up until about age 18 or so. But it's not going to happen quickly with a pointed question in a debate.
So many companies today seem outright hostile to their customers. I am continually amazed how companies do their very best to avoid contact with their customers. Research has shown that people hate computer menus whether they're numerical or voice recognition. And if you do manage to fight your way past those, how many times have you heard "due to unusually high call volume"... 365 days a year, right? Insane.
It's not impossible to run a great call center. I used to work at Zappos and we did our calls in-house and usually maintained wait times under 30 seconds. And the good will we generated with customers has paid off big time. We took on several more established companies with deeper pockets and so far we've left them all in the dust, largely because of our focus on customers.
Also, it's not just about having people answering the phones. There's two other critical ingredients: the phone people have to be empowered to actually serve the customer, which means they have to be well trained, but dammit, that's what it takes to run a company. And they also need to have a voice back to the company itself, so that problems that they encounter are recognized and addressed -- because customer service problems are really just customer problems. And for all the companies spending millions on ads to establish their "brand", they could establish a real, authentic brand by resolving their customer's problems.
There is so much room to improve this kind of thing. I applaud Netflix and wish the luck. Any company that wants to take on the 800lb gorillas need only treat each customer with care and respect. The gorillas never seem to figure this out.
Having just spent some time working with computers in a third world country, here's my take: if you buy into the idea that the computers are good things, then self repair is good. In these environments I've seen that component breakdowns are very common. I sure replaced a lot of motherboards at the schools I was working in. The biggest problem that I saw was not getting computers to the people, it was educating them on how to use them and keep them running.
From another angle, when the kids saw me replacing motherboards, several of them were fascinated. One of the older kids learned how to do it just because he wanted to, and helped us out for several weeks. Now, I'll admit that it is seems a useless skill, but that's only if you consider learning and enjoyment for its own sake to be useless. No, he won't likely be able to monetize the skill, but honestly he'll be lucky if he can monetize anything. So why not enjoy life in the meantime? And any brain exercise is good for these kids, as it sharpens the mind. There are geeks over there too -- they just don't have access to the stuff we do.
Then they're delusional. Most people can't seem to tell when a track has been double encoded and squashed to mono, let alone tell the difference between a clean 128kb MP3 and a CD. Most people's stereo systems are EQ'd as if by a monkey with tinnitus. Or they listen in their car where you've got more road noise and air hiss than even the worse analog cassette tape. Yeah, under ideal conditions some people can tell the difference, but that' not going to make or break "music".
Man, twenty years ago everything sounded like ass anyways. I grew up with records that skipped like little girls, and my Dad used to pile nickels on the playhead to "help". I loved it anyways. If anything, it seems to me that music started dying when people had access to ultra-high-fidelity goods. (Not saying it's a cause, but if you want to correlate stupid things).
I'm a musician (at least some would allow). I have pretty good ears (my musical output notwithstanding). I can _barely_ tell the difference between a CD and a 128kb MP3. If the idea of audio compression in general bothers you, you must be living in a soundproof room with amazing reference speakers instead of a girlfriend. Which is better than what I'm doing, but hey.
like our ancestors did before they had enough brain to aspire for more.
I agree with your post -- but I wanted to mention a thought on this one bit. I think our ancestors probably had just as much brain and aspiration as we did. Which is why we're here today. So why were they living in caves? Simply because they didn't benefit from a huge wealth of knowledge and progress that had gone on before them.
I say this to remind us that basically, we modern folks are not much different in intellect or spirit from cave people. We're just lucky to live after them, after the best of them added their bit to the world. I think it's worth keeping in mind how much we owe to others. And I find it amusing that so many people dismiss this and truly believe that they are somehow separate from others while benefitting immensely from others' work, past and present.
I blame education. They had oodles of exercises in school about the difference between fact and opinion, but just about nothing on fact vs. theory. "It's too hot out" is an opinion. "The temperature was 100 degrees today in Henderson NV" is a fact. "It's 100 degrees because of the interplay between, among other things, solar radiation and mediating moisture" is a theory.
And then they have to teach kids that "theory" is not a pejorative term to throw at things you don't believe.
remember when we would all die in a massive world-wide starvation
I just would like to point out that in the time it took you to write your snarky post a lot of people died of starvation, probably hundreds. Just remember that as you sit in your cushy chair, munch on snacks, and criticize the world for not being as comfortable as you.
I realize that an ad hominem attack is useless, but hey, it's Global Warming! All guidelines for logic and reasonable discussion are null and void. Anyone who doesn't agree has an ulterior motive or is completely stupid. As Card says. As I say.
I'm just gonna live how I like, sit back and watch, and see where we're at in 2100.
Not quite: copies are endless, but the original creation of a desirable song is still limited. So the supply has some interesting properties that don't line up with commodities and such. And that's the thing -- I haven't heard of a compelling description of how this model should work in theory. How do we pay for the limited supply of good music (defined differently by different people of course) and still take advantage of the nearly limitless duplication abilities?
Copyright was an attempt to build a model around this, but it's sort of crumbling at the moment. What's the replacement?
You think flying a jet makes you "smart"? Sure... smarter than your average bear, but we're talking about the president of the US here. I don't think being a fighter pilot indicates that you have the strategic thinking abilities and grasp of subtlety needed to lead the country.
I've worked with a number of Harvard folks, MBAs and more. Yeah, they're smart, but they can be stupid in many situations, like anyone. I doubt any one of them would be a particularly smart president. And neither is Bush. He's blown it. Even by his own standards. He's a lousy leader and he is, in this role... stupid.
I'm ashamed we've so quickly degraded to a political discussion, but I think there's certainly room to think hat Bush is stupid. I'm not saying hillbilly unedjumacated stupid, or low IQ stupid. But we're talking about the president of the US here and so he is held to a higher standard. On that level, as a leader, he is stupid. He has failed to achieve positive momentum in his tenure even by his own standards (his "we're winning" public face notwithstanding). And he doesn't get any slack from me just because he rallied the masses; a bunch of people bandied around fear and hate does not make the leader smart.
To me, the Fermi Paradox doesn't necessarily speak to the non-existence of intelligent life. Maybe it says something about the ability of intelligent life to colonize the galaxy. Perhaps it's an energy issue -- were is all the power to travel and colonize the galaxy going to come from and is it worth harvesting it for space travel? Perhaps it's a time issue --even with light speed travel is it worth it to send their people that far? Perhaps it's a socio-political issue -- can a civilization be stable enough long enough to get such huge projects underway and complete them? Perhaps it's an environmental issue -- even the hospitable earth has mass extinctions every 62 million years; perhaps there's no place that's hospitable enough long enough for civilizations to get much further than we have.
We're an "intelligent" species by some loose definition. We also know that our one intelligent species hasn't achieved meaningful space travel or communication. And I'm not convinced by looking at our collective milieu that we'll be colonizing the galaxy in the next billion years either.
It's all conjecture; I personally think there's life out there, even intelligent life. But we'll probably never meet -- it's just too much effort. And I don't think the Fermi Paradox (which is based on the assumption that galactic colonization is viable) says much about it.
I never used to think the speed of light was much of a limiting factor in my day to day life, but once I was living somewhere without access to wired broadband and so I looked into satellite internet. Then I found that geostationary satellites are about 22,200 miles above the surface of the earth, and that the best-case round trip ping would be about 500 ms. Which is awful for gaming or working via remote terminal.
And suddenly the speed of light seemed strangely slow:)
Slashdot Mirror
I was never a huge Star Trek fan, so perhaps my opinion is worthless, but I really liked the proposed reboot of the Star Trek universe that Straczynski and Zabel envisioned, and wrote a treatment for. I think it's worth a read and consideration.
Cheers.
I hear that. And I admit it's a little sad that we'll probably never meet other lifeforms out there.
But at the same time, I think it's an infinite regress. Meaning we humans have already explored beyond our neighborhoods, our countries, our continents, our cultures. We've found strange and wonderous creatures in environments we cannot live in. We've gone further than anything else we know of. But we want more. I think if we could travel to other stars, we'd still want "more" just as much. If we knew a thousand other races on other planets, we'd be just as curious as to what was just beyond our reach.
I'm not immune to that feeling, and it's probably important for us to keep that desire to some degree. But being aware of it helps me to soften it, and to instead take more pleasure looking deeper into that which is right in front of me, and working towwards discoveries that are a little more likely to be within my reach.
Cheers
Can we ignore the legal discussions for a moment and recognize that this is the best school-board campaign commercial ever?
This guy is my hero.
Cheers.
Even learning that the universe has some underlying structure would somehow seem a lot more comforting.
Really? How come?
My guess is that most people who claim to believe in strong copyrights are violating copyright. It's tough not to at some point: ever made a mix tape? Played music where lots of people could hear it? Photocopied a bit of a magazine or book? Used an image on your desktop or website when you weren't clear on the source? All questionable actions in a strong copyright world.
Ah well... people are pretty comfortable with hypocrisy. Never stopped anyone from badmouthing pornography either.
Cheers.
If it's any consolation: I know what you're talking about with the emptiness, but I think it can fade over time if you take on a new perspective. Lately I've been realizing that we are each of us, essentially, a god. In that we are self aware, willful, intelligent, ambitious, and powerful; something that is seemingly rare in the universe. We are as close to a "god" as this universe might ever give rise to. What is lacking about our natural world that would be somehow better if it were supernatural or spiritual? No matter what the environment, there are going to be some behaviors that make for a consistent reality. What is not magic about ours?
I realize I'm getting a bit too abstract here, but I think it's worth poking at: would any god, existing for all time, with self awareness, will, intelligence, ambition, and power feel so much different than we? What would his purpose be? What would he make of his existence? And the biblical account of how his infinite power brings about nothing but pain and suffering, and mistake after mistake, does anything speak more clearly of the human condition? And when all god wants is to be, in simple terms, loved and accepted?
I sometimes look at each person and think "you are a god" and I become immediately fascinated with what they choose to do with their self awareness, will, intelligence, ambition, and power. Some of them choose to deny it and hand the power to someone else. Some of them abuse the power. Some of them struggle with the responsibility. Some of them break down and lay on the streets, confused as hell.
Another thing to consider is that the sadness and emptiness are inescapable: my mother is the most devout spiritual Christian as one can be. Yet she is plagued by depression and overcome with emotion even more than I am. She breaks down when people die, even though she professes belief in a beautiful afterlife. I have no such comfort yet I seem more at peace with death than her. It actually makes me wonder if perhaps an unshakable belief in the spirit world is in fact just a sign that you are more terrified of this being it. In which case, it's not so much that the believe wholeheartedly in god, but that they are incapable of accepting life without him -- even though they fear that it is true. A form of denial perhaps?
In the end, I don't try to change people's beliefs. If someone feels their life is a better one with a belief in god, who am I to say otherwise? I think that mine is better without that belief, but it is a hard road and yes, I do feel hollow sometimes realizing that there's nobody above me to tell me what is really right or wrong. It's a little like being god.
Enough from me. Good luck in your search...
I just spent some time working in the disadvantaged areas of South Africa, and so I've formed a bit of affection for the nation and its people. While on the face of it I think anyone messing with these developing nations as they try to get their footing is about a pure definition of evil as can be had, I'm not aware how much this one matters. I mean, fsck SBC -- of all the people I met in South Africa, not a one of the blacks had a home phone line. But on the other hand they did all have cell phones. Vodacom and MTN were the major players, and had achieved amazing penetration -- on par with US cell phone penetration, but in an area where people still live 3 generations in a tiny 2 bedroom home.
:)
The only serious downside to having no landlines was a lack of internet connectivity -- nothing fills the early internet dialup niche: there's no flat-fee land line plans, and cell phone internet access is fairly expensive (though cheaper than in the US, I believe). So very few people are connected to the internet if they're lucky enough to have a computer. That is unfortunate. But in the end the people I met are not seriously hampered by the situation. They're amazingly adaptable, cheerful, and texting like crazy
Anyways; good luck to SA. I hope to go again some day.
I think you'd be surprised: without God you'd probably act pretty much the same. I don't believe in God any more, but most people describe me as a very nice person. I'm at least as nice as I was when I did believe in God. Fact is, from a purely selfish perspective, being nice is a great strategy for living a good life. That's not consciously _why_ I do it; I'm nice because I like to be nice. But I suppose on some deeper level the reason I like to be nice is because it makes me feel good. I think that regardless of religious beliefs and ideas about crime and punishment, this is what really makes people behave: because behaving is ultimately good for you.
On the flip side, I certainly don't think belief in God prevents people from doing bad things: most criminals believe in god (just as most non-criminals do). It seems to have little effect on behavior. People do what they want and then find a rationalization.
Cheers
I guess my general question to this kind of thing is: if someone somehow disproved the existence of god, would you be able to accept it? I don't think it's possible to truly disprove god, but just theoretically? Can you imagine letting it go?
I ask because I think that all of my most deeply held beliefs could be turned over if someone showed me a convincing proof. I've let go of dear convictions before in the face of strong evidence, and I think that is what any true explorer of life has to do. You may be able to hold on to a belief in god your whole life, and that's fine, but if you can't even imagine letting it go then you've crossed into irrationality.
Cheers.
Having broken my arm in a human vs. human match, I can assure you that you don't get a clear signal when your bone is about to break. You're pushing and then you hear it snap.
About three years ago a friend and I were arm wrestling at the office and I broke my arm. Made a sound like cracking a yardstick over your knee. Had to get surgery and a metal plate installed. Still have a pretty crazy scar from that. It's cool though because he's bought me enough beers to more than make up for it.
:)
We were guys in good shape, but neither he nor I were strangely strong people. Turns out it's not that hard to break the humerus if you twist it the wrong way. Generally if you're arm wrestling you should be positioned so that you're doing a curl, and putting the stress along the length of the bone. If you are using a twisting motion you're doing it wrong: if you're reasonably strong and you push as hard as you can, you very well might snap your arm.
I think I may have had a hairline fracture beforehand from some aggressive rock climbing a few weeks earlier, during which I experienced some pain in that arm. But even in that case, the cause was still my own muscle strength against my own bone strength, and the bone lost. That worried me so I had a bone density scan after the break. And I came up completely normal.
The scar always gets questions. I've tried telling tall tales and such (a knife fight! no, alligator wrestling! no, a cybernetic bicep implant!), but nothing gets as much of a reaction as the truth. Only problem is people seem to then assume that it means I'm defective for fragile or something. But here's my take: if you've ever arm wrestled and lost without breaking your arm, you're a pussy. Because you just gave up.
Makes me feel a little better, anyways
Sorry, but there will be no successful public argument made with logic on this topic in the next 20 years at least. By asking the question you set up the perfect opportunity for them to rally the troops behind the Word Of God. The candidates' ability to reject facts in favor of the bible will only boost the confidence of the fundamentalists. It will remind them how persecuted their beliefs are, and how they desperately need to keep someone in office who understands their point of view. Which is this: the bible trumps everything, end of story.
I'm not saying it's impossible to change people's minds -- it is. I used to be a fundamentalist anti-evolution person myself up until about age 18 or so. But it's not going to happen quickly with a pointed question in a debate.
Cheers.
So many companies today seem outright hostile to their customers. I am continually amazed how companies do their very best to avoid contact with their customers. Research has shown that people hate computer menus whether they're numerical or voice recognition. And if you do manage to fight your way past those, how many times have you heard "due to unusually high call volume"... 365 days a year, right? Insane.
It's not impossible to run a great call center. I used to work at Zappos and we did our calls in-house and usually maintained wait times under 30 seconds. And the good will we generated with customers has paid off big time. We took on several more established companies with deeper pockets and so far we've left them all in the dust, largely because of our focus on customers.
Also, it's not just about having people answering the phones. There's two other critical ingredients: the phone people have to be empowered to actually serve the customer, which means they have to be well trained, but dammit, that's what it takes to run a company. And they also need to have a voice back to the company itself, so that problems that they encounter are recognized and addressed -- because customer service problems are really just customer problems. And for all the companies spending millions on ads to establish their "brand", they could establish a real, authentic brand by resolving their customer's problems.
There is so much room to improve this kind of thing. I applaud Netflix and wish the luck. Any company that wants to take on the 800lb gorillas need only treat each customer with care and respect. The gorillas never seem to figure this out.
Cheers.
Having just spent some time working with computers in a third world country, here's my take: if you buy into the idea that the computers are good things, then self repair is good. In these environments I've seen that component breakdowns are very common. I sure replaced a lot of motherboards at the schools I was working in. The biggest problem that I saw was not getting computers to the people, it was educating them on how to use them and keep them running.
From another angle, when the kids saw me replacing motherboards, several of them were fascinated. One of the older kids learned how to do it just because he wanted to, and helped us out for several weeks. Now, I'll admit that it is seems a useless skill, but that's only if you consider learning and enjoyment for its own sake to be useless. No, he won't likely be able to monetize the skill, but honestly he'll be lucky if he can monetize anything. So why not enjoy life in the meantime? And any brain exercise is good for these kids, as it sharpens the mind. There are geeks over there too -- they just don't have access to the stuff we do.
Cheers.
Then they're delusional. Most people can't seem to tell when a track has been double encoded and squashed to mono, let alone tell the difference between a clean 128kb MP3 and a CD. Most people's stereo systems are EQ'd as if by a monkey with tinnitus. Or they listen in their car where you've got more road noise and air hiss than even the worse analog cassette tape. Yeah, under ideal conditions some people can tell the difference, but that' not going to make or break "music".
Man, twenty years ago everything sounded like ass anyways. I grew up with records that skipped like little girls, and my Dad used to pile nickels on the playhead to "help". I loved it anyways. If anything, it seems to me that music started dying when people had access to ultra-high-fidelity goods. (Not saying it's a cause, but if you want to correlate stupid things).
I'm a musician (at least some would allow). I have pretty good ears (my musical output notwithstanding). I can _barely_ tell the difference between a CD and a 128kb MP3. If the idea of audio compression in general bothers you, you must be living in a soundproof room with amazing reference speakers instead of a girlfriend. Which is better than what I'm doing, but hey.
Cheers.
Every person I described it to, in hopes that they would remember...
:)
Dude, you need some new friends! All mine would know Voltron immediatly!
Now, if I could only make friends with girls...
But I'm glad you've rediscovered it anyways
PS (admittedly it's a little older crowd, having been into Voltron probably around twelve or so)
like our ancestors did before they had enough brain to aspire for more.
I agree with your post -- but I wanted to mention a thought on this one bit. I think our ancestors probably had just as much brain and aspiration as we did. Which is why we're here today. So why were they living in caves? Simply because they didn't benefit from a huge wealth of knowledge and progress that had gone on before them.
I say this to remind us that basically, we modern folks are not much different in intellect or spirit from cave people. We're just lucky to live after them, after the best of them added their bit to the world. I think it's worth keeping in mind how much we owe to others. And I find it amusing that so many people dismiss this and truly believe that they are somehow separate from others while benefitting immensely from others' work, past and present.
Cheers.
I blame education. They had oodles of exercises in school about the difference between fact and opinion, but just about nothing on fact vs. theory. "It's too hot out" is an opinion. "The temperature was 100 degrees today in Henderson NV" is a fact. "It's 100 degrees because of the interplay between, among other things, solar radiation and mediating moisture" is a theory.
And then they have to teach kids that "theory" is not a pejorative term to throw at things you don't believe.
Meh.
remember when we would all die in a massive world-wide starvation
I just would like to point out that in the time it took you to write your snarky post a lot of people died of starvation, probably hundreds. Just remember that as you sit in your cushy chair, munch on snacks, and criticize the world for not being as comfortable as you.
Cheers.
Yeah, but Card is an Asshat.
I realize that an ad hominem attack is useless, but hey, it's Global Warming! All guidelines for logic and reasonable discussion are null and void. Anyone who doesn't agree has an ulterior motive or is completely stupid. As Card says. As I say.
I'm just gonna live how I like, sit back and watch, and see where we're at in 2100.
There's only demand, and the supply is endless.
Not quite: copies are endless, but the original creation of a desirable song is still limited. So the supply has some interesting properties that don't line up with commodities and such. And that's the thing -- I haven't heard of a compelling description of how this model should work in theory. How do we pay for the limited supply of good music (defined differently by different people of course) and still take advantage of the nearly limitless duplication abilities?
Copyright was an attempt to build a model around this, but it's sort of crumbling at the moment. What's the replacement?
You think flying a jet makes you "smart"? Sure... smarter than your average bear, but we're talking about the president of the US here. I don't think being a fighter pilot indicates that you have the strategic thinking abilities and grasp of subtlety needed to lead the country.
I've worked with a number of Harvard folks, MBAs and more. Yeah, they're smart, but they can be stupid in many situations, like anyone. I doubt any one of them would be a particularly smart president. And neither is Bush. He's blown it. Even by his own standards. He's a lousy leader and he is, in this role... stupid.
Have our standards really fallen so low? Sigh.
I'm ashamed we've so quickly degraded to a political discussion, but I think there's certainly room to think hat Bush is stupid. I'm not saying hillbilly unedjumacated stupid, or low IQ stupid. But we're talking about the president of the US here and so he is held to a higher standard. On that level, as a leader, he is stupid. He has failed to achieve positive momentum in his tenure even by his own standards (his "we're winning" public face notwithstanding). And he doesn't get any slack from me just because he rallied the masses; a bunch of people bandied around fear and hate does not make the leader smart.
Anyways...
To me, the Fermi Paradox doesn't necessarily speak to the non-existence of intelligent life. Maybe it says something about the ability of intelligent life to colonize the galaxy. Perhaps it's an energy issue -- were is all the power to travel and colonize the galaxy going to come from and is it worth harvesting it for space travel? Perhaps it's a time issue --even with light speed travel is it worth it to send their people that far? Perhaps it's a socio-political issue -- can a civilization be stable enough long enough to get such huge projects underway and complete them? Perhaps it's an environmental issue -- even the hospitable earth has mass extinctions every 62 million years; perhaps there's no place that's hospitable enough long enough for civilizations to get much further than we have.
We're an "intelligent" species by some loose definition. We also know that our one intelligent species hasn't achieved meaningful space travel or communication. And I'm not convinced by looking at our collective milieu that we'll be colonizing the galaxy in the next billion years either.
It's all conjecture; I personally think there's life out there, even intelligent life. But we'll probably never meet -- it's just too much effort. And I don't think the Fermi Paradox (which is based on the assumption that galactic colonization is viable) says much about it.
Cheers.
I never used to think the speed of light was much of a limiting factor in my day to day life, but once I was living somewhere without access to wired broadband and so I looked into satellite internet. Then I found that geostationary satellites are about 22,200 miles above the surface of the earth, and that the best-case round trip ping would be about 500 ms. Which is awful for gaming or working via remote terminal.
:)
And suddenly the speed of light seemed strangely slow