What level of sophistication is even required to dislike Avatar, or the Indy-butt-raping scandal that was his last attempt at Indiana Jones, Jumping the Shark?
I just love the fact he took a famous chick-flick and turned it 3D so he could force a ton of guys out there to take women to see that movie all over again, at prices greater than the original ticket price. Although, in that situation there could be a silver lining.
It's not really that unreasonable. When I say American food, I am talking about food that was invented in America. Stuff like the traditional hamburger, hot dog, etc. Immigrants, which includes all of us, did bring recipes with them, but when you go to restaurants like that do they call it American food? Italians still call it an Italian restaurant in America, even when some of the dishes are Americanized.
There really is not that much that American can claim as its own. Most of the really good stuff came along with immigrants, and is still classified as such.
No question about the beer. Americans fucked that up plenty. Although I don't drink except on rare occasions, I have tasted the difference between American and German beers. Talk about a difference.
I have not had a lot of British sweets, but I will take your word for it. The rest of it is terrible. British-Indian food? Never had it.
Perhaps I lumped all Indian food together. To be fair, there are some subcategories. I think anything from the south sucks ass. All that vegetarian nonsense. Northern provinces like Punjab have some pretty good stuff. Most of what I have tasted is what Americans think Indian food is.. so it may not be accurate.Having been dragged (literally) to quite a few Indian restaurants most of them are not Punjab. It's all stuff that I would not want to qualify as food. I would even have British food before that stuff.
Miles ahead of Chinese or Thai food? Highly, highly unlikely. Here I am most certainly not talking about Americanized versions of their food either. Traditional Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Laotion food just rocks. I have eaten in China and there is a big difference in the food, even when prepared traditionally in the US.
I will take Chinese and Laotion food all day long over Punjab Indian food. All of that, of course, is light years ahead of any traditional American fare.
Tardiness can be a social problem, homelessness and joblessness can be social problems, illiteracy can be a social problem. Intellectual property is a social problem, a huge social problem.
Assisting you in finding your peeps or the nearest place to get a hamburger is not solving a social problem.
Look.... as far as cuisine goes.... you both (America and British) are like two ugly fat chicks arguing about who is uglier.
Americans got Mac'N'Cheese, everything drowned in ketchup, and the nastiest processed food on Earth,.... and... you Brits got spotted dick, the traditional breakfast with those charcoal briquettes of fried blood, and some of the most bland tasting food of all time. All the more hysterical since you practically invented the Spice trade.
Anything good in America was imported along with immigrants. Quite frankly, the only uglier chick in the room is Indian cuisine. Not hard to see why they are rail thin peoples.
Counter-intuitively, you would expect Chinese and Thai people to be fat as fuck, since that is some seriously, seriously tasty food.
When was the last time you were messed up on a couch with some people all craving British food?
Now I will give props to the British for their lecherous and lazy gambler that invented the sandwich. One of the best culinary inventions in the last thousand years. The best being, of course, the chocolate covered peanut.
A perceived increase in security is never worth a tangible loss in freedoms.
The danger is the children growing up and thinking this is okay everywhere they go. It is most emphatically, not okay.
There can be exceptions, for adults only, in high security businesses. In those situations it will be a choice, and most likely well compensated. Tracking systems like this should never, ever, be acceptable in public and daily life, and certainly not for children. They should grow up thinking such systems are weird, intrusive, and only required in the most serious of circumstances.
People need to fucking grow a pair and realize that life is dangerous. Have some courage and face life head on, and stop being such cowards trading away your freedoms at every corner for shiny trinkets and illusions of a safer world with a better informed authority.
And what purpose does this serve? have teachers completely forgotten how to take attendance? I know it's low tech, but it's a whole lot more accurate, cheaper, and much less orwellian.
Not to mention it puts the responsibility with an adult that should already be investing time, energy, and interest in the child's welfare. Not only will that always be better than an automated system, it's also the right thing a teacher should be doing anyways.
If people want to make the word sunrise no longer mean that the sun is rising, then I will leave them to such idiocy.
It's really funny that all of you ACs attack me with such vulgar responses void of any facts or logic other than, "It is because we say it is".
Intellectual masturbation? Reading a word and understanding the definition from the word itself is masturbatory? I guess that means I have a lot more fun with language than you do.....
You still don't get it. This is not about the evolution of language. It is specifically about stating that the inherent definitions of a word like decimate are wrong, or the "old" ways.
To make it simpler, it would be like saying that the word sunrise no longer means the rising of the sun. Sure.... our language *could* evolve for that. However, having this conversation in another 500 years will not make it any less ridiculous that you are claiming that it is unreasonable to define sunrise as sun rising.
Its right there, sun and rise. How else could you define it? Are you going to make the sun rising the obsolete definition of that word?
Decimate is no different. The word roots themselves are defining the word!
My point is simple. If the word is constructed with other word roots it is not terribly complex to derive a meaning. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to continue to hold to a definition that includes the value of 10 and hold a different definition (added later in time) with no reference to the value 10 as less accurate.
Now you can claim the meaning is deprecated all you want, and that things do change over time, but it is awfully silly to specifically deprecate a meaning that is derived from the word roots themselves.
I wholly disagree about the obviousness. If you look at the definitions themselves, the 1st definition is not even limited by the value of 10. Come one.... how logical is it to have a word with the value 10 so prominent... and then completely disregard it in the claimed primary definition?
This has nothing to do with being pedantic or superior. Only that if you are educated and have been exposed to language and word roots, it is not unreasonable to use that knowledge to derive their meanings. In this case, that is 100% accurate. The only thing you are claiming is not that the definition does not exist, only that we should no longer apply it.
That is crazy. Just plain crazy.
Without a dictionary I have had a fair amount of success deriving the meaning of words just from word roots themselves. Try verisimilitude. Somebody asked me what that meant a week or to ago and I nailed it just from understanding a smattering of Latin that allowed me to derive to other words, Truth and Similarity.
Are you going to seriously sit there and tell me that in 200 years it is not being pedantic to say the definition of verisimilitude should not be about some chick's thong?
In other words, unless you're talking about the specific case of people, not only is "to destroy a great proportion of" the first definition, but your definition is marked obsolete.
Aside from you being a bit of jerk about if, I have a very hard time seeing how it is obsolete. Especially since the value of 10 is in the word. That would logically involve the number 10 in whatever action is being taken.
If you have any understanding of language at all, possibly speak multiple languages, the word defines itself. So while some dictionaries may have "claimed" that definition to be obsolete due to the unwashed masses being progressively less and less educated each year, anybody with a modicum of education would reasonably assume it to be about taking 1/10th of something. That's without any knowledge of the Roman empire.
Decimate is not the only word that defines itself either if you have knowledge of word roots. For example, ambulatory. Without a dictionary I already know it is about walking and with the suffix, probably about the ability to walk.
I never got higher than a C in English either, and far from the most educated person with language and literature. I'm sure some Spelling and Grammar Nazis could give you a Blitzkrieg like lesson if you ask.
Yeah, I understand. I pay a cable fee right now whether I like it or not. While I just consider it a living expense, it does annoy the living shit out me that those bastards are getting the money. They even tried to double charge me until I had a conniption fit and told them the property management was picking up the tab and I was not paying for shit.
I don't really have a place to move either. Where I live now is the best place within 10 miles of where I work. My only option is saving enough money to move out into a house *again*. Already lost several houses with the economy, so I am still dealing with that.
So while I pay for cable TV, I don't use it at all. Can't stand it.
We are thinking about it. You laid it out very nicely and touched on many of the important points of what we can do to change.
However, that is highly unlikely to happen. The primary benefit of the way we conduct business now is control. If it was really about fairness and collecting revenue for government efficiently we could have a consumption based tax system that was more or less passive to the average citizen and would not require billions being spent on tax preparation.
Nearly everything you point out does not allow for the control that is desired.
It is interesting that some of the most efficient and practical systems for creating a society also have the benefit of anonymity, privacy, and lack of control. Passive systems that don't require the direct involvement and oversight by various corporations and government bodies.
You belong in Star Trek, and most likely that is the only world where we will ever see such ideas come to pass. At least without a really bloody and painful intermission.
It's also worth pointing out that the only thing eliminating cash will do is change the consideration in an illegal contract.
People will start making their own gold coins. It does not matter what it is. If it has a relatively stable value and decent demand in a market it will be used for a transaction.
The only thing outlawing cash will do is control lawful transactions. Which make up the vast majority of transactions anyways.
oh yeah, torrent aren't run by assholes that think they can control the distribution~
Not sure what you mean, but no they are not run by assholes who think they can control the distribution.
It's about the most free market you can get. Nobody controls distribution and the moment you don't deliver what people want you become irrelevant and the next person comes along and provides what people want.
Just don't have any form of traditional television that is ridiculously super expensive and run by assholes that *think* they can control the distribution.
I have Netflix and torrents. Recently, I started doing the torrents again for some TV instead of waiting for the DVD releases which have no overlay advertisements of any kind. The new webrip torrents are awesome. No commercials, and all those annoying overlays are history.
Before you say it is pirating, that is merely a point of view, not a fact. Anything they broadcast into my home is something I can store or obtain in any means I want. They made it free when they put it in my home without my consent, and without my ability to block it. They don't want me to have it? Stop broadcasting it into my house.
Issues of piracy aside, with RSS feeds, seedboxes, and automated processes I have something much better than cable television. So much better. At worst, it is about a 3-6 hour delay from broadcast television.
I'm starting to form an alternative theory about why Einstein gets more tail than you do.
Ah so you're one of those "nice guys" who can't be honest about what he sees.
You definitely hear "let's just be friends" and "you're like a brother to me" more than I do. More than zero, specifically.
There is a difference between being honest and just being a misogynistic asshole.
Whore is a degrading word that indicates a woman will perform sexual acts with any man for money. That's it.
In this context, whore is definitely not appropriate at all. A woman deciding on whether or not she is going to have a relationship with a man, let alone sexual activity, based on his attributes is not being a whore at all. Money is only a small part of that. While money can be linked with stability, most women are interested in stability since it indicates that the man can not only take care of her, but can take care of children as well.
Money is not always the best indicator of the qualities a woman is looking for either in the long term. How many multi-multi-millionaires have treated women like shit and bailed on their kids?
So while there are some women that clearly are gold diggin' whores, it is quite a stretch (and just plain disrespectful) to say it applies to all women. According to that logic, his mom is a whore, and my mom is a whore, and I can only speak for his mom.
As if the UK is going to be any better? If it is a race to fascist totalitarianism than the UK is currently leading with the US and Australia trailing behind....
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah... you get to be 23. Now get of my lawn and go nail a college student.
What level of sophistication is even required to dislike Avatar, or the Indy-butt-raping scandal that was his last attempt at Indiana Jones, Jumping the Shark?
I just love the fact he took a famous chick-flick and turned it 3D so he could force a ton of guys out there to take women to see that movie all over again, at prices greater than the original ticket price. Although, in that situation there could be a silver lining.
It's not really that unreasonable. When I say American food, I am talking about food that was invented in America. Stuff like the traditional hamburger, hot dog, etc. Immigrants, which includes all of us, did bring recipes with them, but when you go to restaurants like that do they call it American food? Italians still call it an Italian restaurant in America, even when some of the dishes are Americanized.
There really is not that much that American can claim as its own. Most of the really good stuff came along with immigrants, and is still classified as such.
No question about the beer. Americans fucked that up plenty. Although I don't drink except on rare occasions, I have tasted the difference between American and German beers. Talk about a difference.
I have not had a lot of British sweets, but I will take your word for it. The rest of it is terrible. British-Indian food? Never had it.
Perhaps I lumped all Indian food together. To be fair, there are some subcategories. I think anything from the south sucks ass. All that vegetarian nonsense. Northern provinces like Punjab have some pretty good stuff. Most of what I have tasted is what Americans think Indian food is.. so it may not be accurate.Having been dragged (literally) to quite a few Indian restaurants most of them are not Punjab. It's all stuff that I would not want to qualify as food. I would even have British food before that stuff.
Miles ahead of Chinese or Thai food? Highly, highly unlikely. Here I am most certainly not talking about Americanized versions of their food either. Traditional Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Laotion food just rocks. I have eaten in China and there is a big difference in the food, even when prepared traditionally in the US.
I will take Chinese and Laotion food all day long over Punjab Indian food. All of that, of course, is light years ahead of any traditional American fare.
Your example is not a social problem.
Tardiness can be a social problem, homelessness and joblessness can be social problems, illiteracy can be a social problem. Intellectual property is a social problem, a huge social problem.
Assisting you in finding your peeps or the nearest place to get a hamburger is not solving a social problem.
Look.... as far as cuisine goes.... you both (America and British) are like two ugly fat chicks arguing about who is uglier.
Americans got Mac'N'Cheese, everything drowned in ketchup, and the nastiest processed food on Earth, .... and ... you Brits got spotted dick, the traditional breakfast with those charcoal briquettes of fried blood, and some of the most bland tasting food of all time. All the more hysterical since you practically invented the Spice trade.
Anything good in America was imported along with immigrants. Quite frankly, the only uglier chick in the room is Indian cuisine. Not hard to see why they are rail thin peoples.
Counter-intuitively, you would expect Chinese and Thai people to be fat as fuck, since that is some seriously, seriously tasty food.
When was the last time you were messed up on a couch with some people all craving British food?
Now I will give props to the British for their lecherous and lazy gambler that invented the sandwich. One of the best culinary inventions in the last thousand years. The best being, of course, the chocolate covered peanut.
People are not assets, and should not be tracked.
A perceived increase in security is never worth a tangible loss in freedoms.
The danger is the children growing up and thinking this is okay everywhere they go. It is most emphatically, not okay .
There can be exceptions, for adults only, in high security businesses. In those situations it will be a choice, and most likely well compensated. Tracking systems like this should never, ever, be acceptable in public and daily life, and certainly not for children. They should grow up thinking such systems are weird, intrusive, and only required in the most serious of circumstances.
People need to fucking grow a pair and realize that life is dangerous. Have some courage and face life head on, and stop being such cowards trading away your freedoms at every corner for shiny trinkets and illusions of a safer world with a better informed authority.
Interesting. I just saw The Hunger Games. You fit in perfectly with the antagonists in that movie....
And what purpose does this serve? have teachers completely forgotten how to take attendance? I know it's low tech, but it's a whole lot more accurate, cheaper, and much less orwellian.
Not to mention it puts the responsibility with an adult that should already be investing time, energy, and interest in the child's welfare. Not only will that always be better than an automated system, it's also the right thing a teacher should be doing anyways.
Nooooo...
PORK is the other white meat. Babies are the other other white meat.
I want my baby back baby back baby back baby back baby back baby back ribs. *Chili's* Baby back ribs.
If you get it, then I am not wrong.
If people want to make the word sunrise no longer mean that the sun is rising, then I will leave them to such idiocy.
It's really funny that all of you ACs attack me with such vulgar responses void of any facts or logic other than, "It is because we say it is".
Intellectual masturbation? Reading a word and understanding the definition from the word itself is masturbatory? I guess that means I have a lot more fun with language than you do.....
LOL.
You still don't get it. This is not about the evolution of language. It is specifically about stating that the inherent definitions of a word like decimate are wrong, or the "old" ways.
To make it simpler, it would be like saying that the word sunrise no longer means the rising of the sun. Sure.... our language *could* evolve for that. However, having this conversation in another 500 years will not make it any less ridiculous that you are claiming that it is unreasonable to define sunrise as sun rising.
Its right there, sun and rise. How else could you define it? Are you going to make the sun rising the obsolete definition of that word?
Decimate is no different. The word roots themselves are defining the word!
Sheeeesh.
It's funny how seriously everybody takes this.
My point is simple. If the word is constructed with other word roots it is not terribly complex to derive a meaning. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to continue to hold to a definition that includes the value of 10 and hold a different definition (added later in time) with no reference to the value 10 as less accurate.
Now you can claim the meaning is deprecated all you want, and that things do change over time, but it is awfully silly to specifically deprecate a meaning that is derived from the word roots themselves.
I wholly disagree about the obviousness. If you look at the definitions themselves, the 1st definition is not even limited by the value of 10. Come one.... how logical is it to have a word with the value 10 so prominent... and then completely disregard it in the claimed primary definition?
This has nothing to do with being pedantic or superior. Only that if you are educated and have been exposed to language and word roots, it is not unreasonable to use that knowledge to derive their meanings. In this case, that is 100% accurate. The only thing you are claiming is not that the definition does not exist, only that we should no longer apply it.
That is crazy. Just plain crazy.
Without a dictionary I have had a fair amount of success deriving the meaning of words just from word roots themselves. Try verisimilitude. Somebody asked me what that meant a week or to ago and I nailed it just from understanding a smattering of Latin that allowed me to derive to other words, Truth and Similarity.
Are you going to seriously sit there and tell me that in 200 years it is not being pedantic to say the definition of verisimilitude should not be about some chick's thong?
It's entirely obvious to me. The word itself involves an action being performed with the number 10.
What might it mean? Whatever it is, I know it involves the number 10 right?
That's why the definition that includes 1/10th is obvious to me and not deprecated in any way.
In other words, unless you're talking about the specific case of people, not only is "to destroy a great proportion of" the first definition, but your definition is marked obsolete.
Aside from you being a bit of jerk about if, I have a very hard time seeing how it is obsolete. Especially since the value of 10 is in the word. That would logically involve the number 10 in whatever action is being taken.
If you have any understanding of language at all, possibly speak multiple languages, the word defines itself. So while some dictionaries may have "claimed" that definition to be obsolete due to the unwashed masses being progressively less and less educated each year, anybody with a modicum of education would reasonably assume it to be about taking 1/10th of something. That's without any knowledge of the Roman empire.
Decimate is not the only word that defines itself either if you have knowledge of word roots. For example, ambulatory. Without a dictionary I already know it is about walking and with the suffix, probably about the ability to walk.
I never got higher than a C in English either, and far from the most educated person with language and literature. I'm sure some Spelling and Grammar Nazis could give you a Blitzkrieg like lesson if you ask.
Ohh. You are in one of those places.
Yeah, I understand. I pay a cable fee right now whether I like it or not. While I just consider it a living expense, it does annoy the living shit out me that those bastards are getting the money. They even tried to double charge me until I had a conniption fit and told them the property management was picking up the tab and I was not paying for shit.
I don't really have a place to move either. Where I live now is the best place within 10 miles of where I work. My only option is saving enough money to move out into a house *again*. Already lost several houses with the economy, so I am still dealing with that.
So while I pay for cable TV, I don't use it at all. Can't stand it.
We are thinking about it. You laid it out very nicely and touched on many of the important points of what we can do to change.
However, that is highly unlikely to happen. The primary benefit of the way we conduct business now is control. If it was really about fairness and collecting revenue for government efficiently we could have a consumption based tax system that was more or less passive to the average citizen and would not require billions being spent on tax preparation.
Nearly everything you point out does not allow for the control that is desired.
It is interesting that some of the most efficient and practical systems for creating a society also have the benefit of anonymity, privacy, and lack of control. Passive systems that don't require the direct involvement and oversight by various corporations and government bodies.
You belong in Star Trek, and most likely that is the only world where we will ever see such ideas come to pass. At least without a really bloody and painful intermission.
It's also worth pointing out that the only thing eliminating cash will do is change the consideration in an illegal contract.
People will start making their own gold coins. It does not matter what it is. If it has a relatively stable value and decent demand in a market it will be used for a transaction.
The only thing outlawing cash will do is control lawful transactions. Which make up the vast majority of transactions anyways.
oh yeah, torrent aren't run by assholes that think they can control the distribution~
Not sure what you mean, but no they are not run by assholes who think they can control the distribution.
It's about the most free market you can get. Nobody controls distribution and the moment you don't deliver what people want you become irrelevant and the next person comes along and provides what people want.
Sure it is no effort at all.
Just don't have any form of traditional television that is ridiculously super expensive and run by assholes that *think* they can control the distribution.
I have Netflix and torrents. Recently, I started doing the torrents again for some TV instead of waiting for the DVD releases which have no overlay advertisements of any kind. The new webrip torrents are awesome. No commercials, and all those annoying overlays are history.
Before you say it is pirating, that is merely a point of view, not a fact. Anything they broadcast into my home is something I can store or obtain in any means I want. They made it free when they put it in my home without my consent, and without my ability to block it. They don't want me to have it? Stop broadcasting it into my house.
Issues of piracy aside, with RSS feeds, seedboxes, and automated processes I have something much better than cable television. So much better. At worst, it is about a 3-6 hour delay from broadcast television.
I'm starting to form an alternative theory about why Einstein gets more tail than you do.
Ah so you're one of those "nice guys" who can't be honest about what he sees.
You definitely hear "let's just be friends" and "you're like a brother to me" more than I do. More than zero, specifically.
There is a difference between being honest and just being a misogynistic asshole.
Whore is a degrading word that indicates a woman will perform sexual acts with any man for money. That's it.
In this context, whore is definitely not appropriate at all. A woman deciding on whether or not she is going to have a relationship with a man, let alone sexual activity, based on his attributes is not being a whore at all. Money is only a small part of that. While money can be linked with stability, most women are interested in stability since it indicates that the man can not only take care of her, but can take care of children as well.
Money is not always the best indicator of the qualities a woman is looking for either in the long term. How many multi-multi-millionaires have treated women like shit and bailed on their kids?
So while there are some women that clearly are gold diggin' whores, it is quite a stretch (and just plain disrespectful) to say it applies to all women. According to that logic, his mom is a whore, and my mom is a whore, and I can only speak for his mom.
Rejecting bullshit like that is about as easy as rejecting 3D televisions and cable TV. Practically no effort at all....
Oooh. Gooooood answer. 10/10.
Hmmmm, well I caught something. I am just not sure how to categorize you yet......
As if the UK is going to be any better? If it is a race to fascist totalitarianism than the UK is currently leading with the US and Australia trailing behind....
This is modded funny because if we don't laugh we start to cry.....