That sounds like the plot to a campy 50s-60s movie. Obviously they are just waiting for dark horse awesome surfer and a group of underdogs to come along and unseat them in a contrived surfing tournament.
I don't see you enumerating the achievements of those illiterate cultures. Perhaps because they don't really have any? I suppose I should expect as much from somebody who conflates race and culture.
For the purpose of full disclosure, let me first say I am a hardcore libertarian minarchist capitalist, nearly anarcho-capitalist. However I have to say that it appears you know very little about the culture or history of Asia or its relationships with the West. First you wildly conflate culture, economics and politics. After the Meiji Restoration the Westernization effort brought about rapid top down reforms that freed Japan from centuries long feudal paralysis. There was very little about it that was democratic except that it was now OK for the commoners to actually say things in public. Although the daimyo lost their feudal structure, their position simply transitioned into a system of peerage called the Kazoku which elected some of its numbers into the upper house of the Diet of Japan which was styled after the British House of Lords. However, the culture of Japan from the beginning of the Meiji Restoration through to the end of the Second World War was virtually unchanged! The daily lives of the Japanese, their customs, their values, their aesthetic, everything that makes a culture was touched very little until the American occupation. While the industrialization improved the lives of the Japanese, it didn't make them think any differently. Furthermore the main zaibatsu (family-owned vertical monopolies) that were at the center of the industrialization of Japan were founded by people from the society that existed before the Meiji Restoration--feudal Japanese society. They were Japanese men through and through, started thoroughly Japanese companies for Japanese purposes run in a Japanese way. There was no 'adoption' of anything European, and in fact the nature of Japanese companies is so unique that after the war (even despite deliberate efforts by the occupying US government to dismantle the companies!) when it became obvious that they were outperforming their Western counterparts, it became fashionable for Western businessmen to go to Japan to learn about kaizen!
You say essentially that ripping off creativity will never create a real power. Wow. You don't seem to know your ancient history either. That was the Roman civilization's raison d'etre! They became a world power through jealous mimicry of Greek culture, religion, art, politics, etc. etc. The key to successful empire over the long term has always been synthesis and syncresis. You also ignore the fact that Japan and China are already 'real powers' with the largest economies in the world after the US. (And considering how much US debt is owned by China, I think the balance of power is more equal than most people are comfortable imagining.)
Every 'major war' after 1700 won by a democracy? Which planet are you from? Granted 'major war' is pretty subjective, so let's set the value of more than half a million in casualties and start with the Spanish Civil War, which was pretty major and important as the great proxy war between Germany and Italy and Russia among other European powers. As everybody knows the Nationalists defeated the Republicans and set up a dictatorship under Franco. The 'Eritrean War for Independence' although successful in breaking away Eritrea from Ethiopia put in power a government that while supposedly democratic has never had an election, supports only one party, has had the same president for decades, and an unimplemented constitution. The wars in Congo have had similar results. Moving up the casualty chain we come to the Seven Years' War (AKA the Third Silesian War) at above a million, which although it wasn't 'won' by anybody per se, all the combatants were monarchies! For chrissake the American War of Independence didn't even happen until near the end of the 18th century... why the hell would you ever pick 1700 of all years as the point to start from? Let's not forget that the Chinese and Russian Civil Wars were each won by communists, and the Soviet Union was a victor in WWII, the communists won the Vietnam War, the Imperial Qing forces won in the Taiping rebellion that caused 25 mill
From what I've seen, social trends in the West suggest that ideology has become and continues to grow more important than race as a group identity. A large part of that is probably due to the change in social interaction brought about by the internet, since despite facebook and youtube, most communication is sight unseen. Right now you have no way of knowing for sure what ethnic background I possess (at least not without a fair amount of digging), so you and others will decide whether my association is value on the merits of my statements alone. There have been times online where I've been surprised to find out that somebody was not just another white male that seems to be the default assumption about everybody online unless context suggests otherwise.
Those model ships are fascinating to see side by side.
It is too bad that the 'we are the center of everything' hubris keeps holding back the various Asian cultures. It stopped China from exploration, virtually destroyed Japan during WWII, and was partially responsible for the political inequalities between China and Europe during the late Qing.
The Japanese? Really, you think the Japanese with virtually no military at all and population of domesticated pussy salarymen that has completed forgotten bushido is going to stop CHINA?! Excuse me while I laugh in your face. China is no longer in the 1930s after the fall of a foreign occupying dynasty, the ravages of European colonialism, the fracturing of warlordism in the early Republic, and the political divisions within the erstwhile KMT-Communist alliance. That was the ONLY TIME in 4000 years Japan was ever a credible threat to China.
I think you greatly overestimate the the power of the psychology you speak of vs. socio-political practicalities. China was once a land of many kingdoms, but they were all brought under subjection repeatedly (and each time China fractured, the borders were never the same, because they were drawn more because of political and military expediency, not because of any rule 'unity'). Korea was also home to several kingdoms before it was unified.
Besides which, you're assuming an old paradigm of empire through annexation. Although China clearly wants direct control of Taiwan, in most other dimensions it does not appear interested in old fashioned conquest. China's interest in aircraft carriers and the increasing role that it is playing in Africa and South/Middle America suggests it is interested in establishing a more American model of economic and indirectly political empire through force projection.
Lastly, the Japanese in WWII thought they would rather die to last man than be conquered, but then they were nuked, and seeing the futility of dying without inflicting any losses on the conqueror sobered them up and they surrendered. You know who else has nukes? China. Japan is neither stupid enough nor strong enough to stand against China if a conventional war was waged.
I think you're (deliberately?) missing the point. What I meant of course was 'barring any unforseen disaster or negative socio-political change'. China today is magnitudes better than it was two decades ago, let alone three, four, all the way back to Qianlong at the very least. China's government is still dangerous and corrupt, but it has been slowly improving.
Asians to a small degree? Which world history did you learn? Asian cultures were way ahead in most respects until roughly the Age of Exploration, and still on par until roughly the Enlightenment. Unfortunately some key internal weaknesses arose coincidently within the timeframe when Europeans were most actively colonizing, but ultimately that has been only a couple centuries of a developmental hiccup. The European Dark Ages were longer, and in my opinion, worse. Now Asia is ascendant again, and all things being equal, China will be the most powerful nation on Earth (again, but you obviously wouldn't know the history) in a matter of decades. Japan has managed to be second only to the US economically despite having a smaller total land area than Zimbabwe (wherein it logistically supports more than eleven times as many people with a quality of life, literacy, and depth of culture magnitudes greater).
Asia has a history of literature at least equivalent to that of Europe, as well as visual art and music, architecture and engineering, philosophy and religion, virtually every dimension.
To single out the Chinese, since I happen to know more about them than other Asian cultures, they invented the movable type printing press before Gutenberg, but their language was so complex that it wasn't practical so it didn't see a lot of use. They invented the compass, the crossbow, sericulture, belt drive, borehole drilling (did you know the deepest hole ever excavated by man before 1835 was done by the Chinese to extract salt brine?), a calendar as accurate as the Julian four centuries earlier (and another as accurate as the Gregorian three centuries earlier), cast iron, single and multistage rockets, negative numbers, porcelain, etc.
Though I would agree that the illiterate cultures of sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas have little real, objective value, that you can try to level similar charges at Asia suggests to me that you are either ignorant or truly bigoted.
People who wish to believe in the Bible and the God of the Bible will go to great lengths to come up with other, usually more complicated explanations for data.
There, fixed that for you. Seriously though, I think this was already pretty pithily handled above.
Speaking as somebody who once wore a Boeing namebadge, 'if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going.'
Computer control concerns aside, Airbuses can't dump fuel, so if something happens (and things have happened) where an Airbus must be near empty because of a stuck landing gear (also a little too common on Airbus), you get to sit tight for HOURS AND HOURS waiting in circles for the engines to eat fuel.
Not all pilots are created equal. While there are certainly some pilots who hit the commercial airline world straight from some simulator at a school, a lot come from military service (where some have been literally 'battle tested' in air combat no less), and others come from older and/or smaller aircraft operation.
E3's relevance is receding. This year is a desperate attempt after two years in the wilderness. E3 is an old paradigm. Sure it was the king of the North American game design/publishing world for over a decade, but in terms of size, it's second fiddle to PAX now. Next year there will be TWO PAX events, one on each coast, which will turn PAX into a direct point of contact for (I would wager) more than 100,000 people a year. PAX is the new paradigm, reaching people directly, virally, and relevantly with no middleman. Gamers don't trust the 'big' media anymore, just look at what happened to Jeff Gerstmann, rather Penny Arcade gets millions of unique hits every day because they have built a reputation for being an honest source of information and opinions about the industry. And while at E3, some stupid journalist who wouldn't know an XBOX from his toaster might go to a press conference and ask a designer/publisher, 'so, would you say your next game is awesome or just plain amazing?' Conversely, at PAX, somebody who cut his teeth on the Atari 2600, NES, or PC games from Microprose and knows everything that the industry has done right and wrong for decades might go to a panel and ask a designer/publisher, 'why did your game suck so hard?' and rather than being thrown out by security, might in fact receive a standing ovation from a group of his peers. Considering how far your tongue is up E3's rectum, I wouldn't be surprised if you worked for SOE and are worried about facing that sort of scenario.
PAX is immeasurably greater than E3, and it's growing so fast and vigorously that Khoo is worried that Seattle will sell out this year because the largest convention center in the state is too small. Unfortunately for the media, they're creatures of habit, and it will take them a while to wake up to the fact that they're now largely ignoring the largest event simply because they don't really know what's going on, which is why the generations of gamers largely ignore the mainstream media already. (Which further explains why so many game designers and publishers attend PAX, so many that this year they are turning many smaller entities away, which is sad, but space is finite.)
E3's reign ended in 2006, it's just history and momentum that's keeping it barely alive (especially with major companies leaving the ESA and E3 behind, like Vivendi Universal and id Software). In a few more years everybody will realize it's second string.
PAX was meant to pacify the gamers that wanted to go to E3 [...]
So is your name secretly Jerry Holkins, Michael Krahulik, or Robert Khoo? How do you know what PAX was 'meant' to do? Speaking as somebody who was at the original PAX in 2004 for every hour it was open (including sleeping under the tables in the BYOC), I can say with certainty that PAX had little to do with E3. Jerry and Mike were very clear, PAX was a product of simply imagining the convention that they wanted and then making that happen. Why else would there be tabletop games? No such thing at E3. A huge elimination tournament the culminated in a 1v1 match of Pong? Never at E3. Movies and musical acts that would speak to gamer culture? Not what E3 is about. BYOC? Please.
PAX was never intended to be just some kind of public E3 analogue (like the dismal failure that E3 spun off to compete with PAX, E for All), otherwise it would be an expo floor and little else. PAX has always been about gamer culture, and if more and more game designers and publishers are onboard each year as well, that's fine too.
Of course you neglect to mention the Progressive Party and its effects on the political system, notably state level referendum/initiative and recall of elected officials.
There is nothing in the Constitution about parties. The founding fathers, furthermore, wanted a no party system.
George Washington, for instance, said these things:
"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally."
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty."
"The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."
John Adams:
"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
Thomas Paine:
"It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle."
Thomas Jefferson wasn't so much positive or negative about parties, as he was resigned to believe that they were inevitable. The important thing to take away is that parties were not part of the original design. Thanks to the First Amendment among other things, there simply was no way to prevent their formation and effect on the government. Once the parties were established, they passed various laws about how ballots could be constructed that keep the major parties in and the minor ones out.
Some progress? Like how Obama rubber-stamped continuing warrantless wiretapping? I knew the Democrats were full of BS when they complained about the PATRIOT Act and similar legislation. As soon as they achieved power, it's just business as usual.
Democrats AND Republicans are generally corrupt, ethically bankrupt scumbags who will do whatever it takes to keep their constituencies scared of each other and running and back and forth between the false dichotomy of the duopolostic political system. The reaction of both the Bush administration and the McCain campaign to the beginning of the recession was telling. The steps they took and the policies they outlined were virtually identical to the Democrats own ideas. It doesn't matter who is in power, every year government still grows out of control.
I stopped voting out of fear. People say voting for 3rd parties is a waste, but at least my conscious is clean, and there will never be any change until people stop worrying about 'wasting their vote' and start worrying about signing on to yet another backstabbing bandwagon.
Right, because people like Mark Allen Wilson are real scum, sacrificing their lives for strangers when they have no obligation to do anything at all. Many experts believe that his wildcard actions saved at least a couple lives and forced the crazed gunman to abort his attack and flee. Mark probably would have killed the jackass if it weren't for the bulletproof vest.
You do realize that quoting source material is the definitive opposite of revisionist right? Or do facts make your own revisionist views a little hard to bear?
I also don't see how the Night of the Long Knives says anything contradictory about the goals of the National Socialist German Workers Party or its broader political effects.
I like how you're so dead-set on not backing up your claims of 'evidence'. You'll of course ignore that statistics from surveys done in 1998 by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms show that 90% of violent crime in the US involve no firearms of any type, further the National Crime Victimization Survey done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 1994 showed that in crimes where the offender possessed a gun 83% of the time they neither used nor explicitly threatened to use it. The Uniform Crime Statistics of the FBI from 1994 have indicated that less than 1% of all firearms will ever be used in the commission of a crime, and also that fully two-thirds of those that die from gunshot wounds are convicted criminals who have been shot by other convicted criminals. Don't let any of these fact get in the way of how you 'feel' about the issue, you might actually have to think instead of grabbing an opinion out of the air.
Raising your voice is more threatening and rude than simply possessing a firearm. I carry an H&K USP.45 fullsize Var. C almost every day, and have done so since I was 21. And unless I talk about it, which is rare, nobody knows I have it. How can something that is invisible be threatening or rude? Far from threatening, I end up being a free bodyguard for everybody within reasonable distance. In all the years I've carried, I've never once had to draw on anybody, but if something were to happen nearby that appeared to be a threat of imminent or act of excessive violence, I would intervene. Maybe that's why Florida's homicide rate fell 40% after concealed carry was legalized. In Texas, murder rates fell 50% faster than the national average after their concealed carry law passed. Rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year after passage, 500% faster in the second. Assaults fell 250% faster in the second year. (Bureau of Justice Statistics 1995-2001) But feel free to keep sticking your fingers in your ears and ignoring the facts from objective sources. Keep believing and pushing the lies. Never mind that states that disallow concealed carry have violent crime rates 11% higher than the national average. (FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 2004) As far as I'm concerned, that increased bloodshed is on the hands of people like you who won't recognize that people who can defend themselves are safer.
Finally, since you singled out handguns and were so quick to declare that you wouldn't back up your opinions (no doubt because if they have any source at all, it will be the discredited, wholly political, unethical things put out by interest groups like the Violence Policy Center that routinely defines 'children' as '23-year-old career felon gang members' just so they can make the number of 'children' killed by gunshots as high as possible), if you take statistics once more from the FBI Uniform Crime, CDC WISQARS, and the BATFE Firearms Commerce Report, you will find that while the number of privately owned handguns has more than doubled since 1970, the handgun homicide rate has fallen 25% since the same year. Quite simply there is no correlation, at all, whatsoever, between handgun ownership and the handgun homicide rate.
There are admittedly some similarities, especially when you get people who are a little nutty about it and start throwing out timelines just like religious nutjobs predicting the apocalypse on a given future date. Trying to predict any future is an act of belief/faith, because no future is a fact. Those who generalize are the most rational.
The key difference is that transhumanism envisions a future where mankind 'saves' itself rather than some deity popping in at some vague future time to use its omnipotence to save mankind from itself. It implicitly represents humanity's coming of age, kind of like collectively reaching an age of majority. Humanity is the first animal on the planet (so far as we know) to reach a stage of advancement such that it can step back, examine itself and its environment, and make a conscious, deliberate choice about how to evolve, short-cutting thousands of years of random genetic trial and error. We actually have the technology to do a lot of rudimentary artificial evolution right now, but collectively humanity seems to lack the confidence to try anything radical. Some people are still so mired in religion and superstition that they think such ideas are blasphemous (no! Santa Claus really is real! If we don't believe in him we won't get any presents!) while others are too squeamish about the necessary evils of experimentation and the risks it poses (even now people whine about animal testing, as though what some animal feels is important, but they'll gleefully squash bugs, kill weeds and bacteria all the time because they're damn subjective idiot hypocrites. Like there's some moral difference between the cute, fuzzy animals they like and the ugly lifeforms they hate).
Sadly it's going to take a few more generations for humanity to proverbially 'move out of mom & dad's house' ('one cannot stay in the cradle forever') both mentally and physically, but assuming that no religious jihad throws us into a sequel to the Dark Ages (which I think the internet thankfully makes impossible so long as the root servers don't fall into the wrong hands), humanity's collective maturity or singularity is inevitable. Whether we merge with machines or begin to design our genetics from the ground up, humanity will technically 'end' but will pass on its most valuable elements to the superior successor that it creates.
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I don't think 12 year olds and passive agressive green weenies were the target audience.
That sounds like the plot to a campy 50s-60s movie. Obviously they are just waiting for dark horse awesome surfer and a group of underdogs to come along and unseat them in a contrived surfing tournament.
I don't think there is a major culture in the world today that is innocent of some kind of atrocity in the past.
I don't see you enumerating the achievements of those illiterate cultures. Perhaps because they don't really have any? I suppose I should expect as much from somebody who conflates race and culture.
For the purpose of full disclosure, let me first say I am a hardcore libertarian minarchist capitalist, nearly anarcho-capitalist. However I have to say that it appears you know very little about the culture or history of Asia or its relationships with the West. First you wildly conflate culture, economics and politics. After the Meiji Restoration the Westernization effort brought about rapid top down reforms that freed Japan from centuries long feudal paralysis. There was very little about it that was democratic except that it was now OK for the commoners to actually say things in public. Although the daimyo lost their feudal structure, their position simply transitioned into a system of peerage called the Kazoku which elected some of its numbers into the upper house of the Diet of Japan which was styled after the British House of Lords. However, the culture of Japan from the beginning of the Meiji Restoration through to the end of the Second World War was virtually unchanged! The daily lives of the Japanese, their customs, their values, their aesthetic, everything that makes a culture was touched very little until the American occupation. While the industrialization improved the lives of the Japanese, it didn't make them think any differently. Furthermore the main zaibatsu (family-owned vertical monopolies) that were at the center of the industrialization of Japan were founded by people from the society that existed before the Meiji Restoration--feudal Japanese society. They were Japanese men through and through, started thoroughly Japanese companies for Japanese purposes run in a Japanese way. There was no 'adoption' of anything European, and in fact the nature of Japanese companies is so unique that after the war (even despite deliberate efforts by the occupying US government to dismantle the companies!) when it became obvious that they were outperforming their Western counterparts, it became fashionable for Western businessmen to go to Japan to learn about kaizen!
You say essentially that ripping off creativity will never create a real power. Wow. You don't seem to know your ancient history either. That was the Roman civilization's raison d'etre! They became a world power through jealous mimicry of Greek culture, religion, art, politics, etc. etc. The key to successful empire over the long term has always been synthesis and syncresis. You also ignore the fact that Japan and China are already 'real powers' with the largest economies in the world after the US. (And considering how much US debt is owned by China, I think the balance of power is more equal than most people are comfortable imagining.)
Every 'major war' after 1700 won by a democracy? Which planet are you from? Granted 'major war' is pretty subjective, so let's set the value of more than half a million in casualties and start with the Spanish Civil War, which was pretty major and important as the great proxy war between Germany and Italy and Russia among other European powers. As everybody knows the Nationalists defeated the Republicans and set up a dictatorship under Franco. The 'Eritrean War for Independence' although successful in breaking away Eritrea from Ethiopia put in power a government that while supposedly democratic has never had an election, supports only one party, has had the same president for decades, and an unimplemented constitution. The wars in Congo have had similar results. Moving up the casualty chain we come to the Seven Years' War (AKA the Third Silesian War) at above a million, which although it wasn't 'won' by anybody per se, all the combatants were monarchies! For chrissake the American War of Independence didn't even happen until near the end of the 18th century... why the hell would you ever pick 1700 of all years as the point to start from? Let's not forget that the Chinese and Russian Civil Wars were each won by communists, and the Soviet Union was a victor in WWII, the communists won the Vietnam War, the Imperial Qing forces won in the Taiping rebellion that caused 25 mill
From what I've seen, social trends in the West suggest that ideology has become and continues to grow more important than race as a group identity. A large part of that is probably due to the change in social interaction brought about by the internet, since despite facebook and youtube, most communication is sight unseen. Right now you have no way of knowing for sure what ethnic background I possess (at least not without a fair amount of digging), so you and others will decide whether my association is value on the merits of my statements alone. There have been times online where I've been surprised to find out that somebody was not just another white male that seems to be the default assumption about everybody online unless context suggests otherwise.
Those model ships are fascinating to see side by side.
It is too bad that the 'we are the center of everything' hubris keeps holding back the various Asian cultures. It stopped China from exploration, virtually destroyed Japan during WWII, and was partially responsible for the political inequalities between China and Europe during the late Qing.
The Japanese? Really, you think the Japanese with virtually no military at all and population of domesticated pussy salarymen that has completed forgotten bushido is going to stop CHINA?! Excuse me while I laugh in your face. China is no longer in the 1930s after the fall of a foreign occupying dynasty, the ravages of European colonialism, the fracturing of warlordism in the early Republic, and the political divisions within the erstwhile KMT-Communist alliance. That was the ONLY TIME in 4000 years Japan was ever a credible threat to China.
I think you greatly overestimate the the power of the psychology you speak of vs. socio-political practicalities. China was once a land of many kingdoms, but they were all brought under subjection repeatedly (and each time China fractured, the borders were never the same, because they were drawn more because of political and military expediency, not because of any rule 'unity'). Korea was also home to several kingdoms before it was unified.
Besides which, you're assuming an old paradigm of empire through annexation. Although China clearly wants direct control of Taiwan, in most other dimensions it does not appear interested in old fashioned conquest. China's interest in aircraft carriers and the increasing role that it is playing in Africa and South/Middle America suggests it is interested in establishing a more American model of economic and indirectly political empire through force projection.
Lastly, the Japanese in WWII thought they would rather die to last man than be conquered, but then they were nuked, and seeing the futility of dying without inflicting any losses on the conqueror sobered them up and they surrendered. You know who else has nukes? China. Japan is neither stupid enough nor strong enough to stand against China if a conventional war was waged.
I think you're (deliberately?) missing the point. What I meant of course was 'barring any unforseen disaster or negative socio-political change'. China today is magnitudes better than it was two decades ago, let alone three, four, all the way back to Qianlong at the very least. China's government is still dangerous and corrupt, but it has been slowly improving.
Asians to a small degree? Which world history did you learn? Asian cultures were way ahead in most respects until roughly the Age of Exploration, and still on par until roughly the Enlightenment. Unfortunately some key internal weaknesses arose coincidently within the timeframe when Europeans were most actively colonizing, but ultimately that has been only a couple centuries of a developmental hiccup. The European Dark Ages were longer, and in my opinion, worse. Now Asia is ascendant again, and all things being equal, China will be the most powerful nation on Earth (again, but you obviously wouldn't know the history) in a matter of decades. Japan has managed to be second only to the US economically despite having a smaller total land area than Zimbabwe (wherein it logistically supports more than eleven times as many people with a quality of life, literacy, and depth of culture magnitudes greater).
Asia has a history of literature at least equivalent to that of Europe, as well as visual art and music, architecture and engineering, philosophy and religion, virtually every dimension.
To single out the Chinese, since I happen to know more about them than other Asian cultures, they invented the movable type printing press before Gutenberg, but their language was so complex that it wasn't practical so it didn't see a lot of use. They invented the compass, the crossbow, sericulture, belt drive, borehole drilling (did you know the deepest hole ever excavated by man before 1835 was done by the Chinese to extract salt brine?), a calendar as accurate as the Julian four centuries earlier (and another as accurate as the Gregorian three centuries earlier), cast iron, single and multistage rockets, negative numbers, porcelain, etc.
Though I would agree that the illiterate cultures of sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas have little real, objective value, that you can try to level similar charges at Asia suggests to me that you are either ignorant or truly bigoted.
People who wish to believe in the Bible and the God of the Bible will go to great lengths to come up with other, usually more complicated explanations for data.
There, fixed that for you. Seriously though, I think this was already pretty pithily handled above.
Speaking as somebody who once wore a Boeing namebadge, 'if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going.' Computer control concerns aside, Airbuses can't dump fuel, so if something happens (and things have happened) where an Airbus must be near empty because of a stuck landing gear (also a little too common on Airbus), you get to sit tight for HOURS AND HOURS waiting in circles for the engines to eat fuel.
Not all pilots are created equal. While there are certainly some pilots who hit the commercial airline world straight from some simulator at a school, a lot come from military service (where some have been literally 'battle tested' in air combat no less), and others come from older and/or smaller aircraft operation.
E3's relevance is receding. This year is a desperate attempt after two years in the wilderness. E3 is an old paradigm. Sure it was the king of the North American game design/publishing world for over a decade, but in terms of size, it's second fiddle to PAX now. Next year there will be TWO PAX events, one on each coast, which will turn PAX into a direct point of contact for (I would wager) more than 100,000 people a year. PAX is the new paradigm, reaching people directly, virally, and relevantly with no middleman. Gamers don't trust the 'big' media anymore, just look at what happened to Jeff Gerstmann, rather Penny Arcade gets millions of unique hits every day because they have built a reputation for being an honest source of information and opinions about the industry. And while at E3, some stupid journalist who wouldn't know an XBOX from his toaster might go to a press conference and ask a designer/publisher, 'so, would you say your next game is awesome or just plain amazing?' Conversely, at PAX, somebody who cut his teeth on the Atari 2600, NES, or PC games from Microprose and knows everything that the industry has done right and wrong for decades might go to a panel and ask a designer/publisher, 'why did your game suck so hard?' and rather than being thrown out by security, might in fact receive a standing ovation from a group of his peers. Considering how far your tongue is up E3's rectum, I wouldn't be surprised if you worked for SOE and are worried about facing that sort of scenario.
PAX is immeasurably greater than E3, and it's growing so fast and vigorously that Khoo is worried that Seattle will sell out this year because the largest convention center in the state is too small. Unfortunately for the media, they're creatures of habit, and it will take them a while to wake up to the fact that they're now largely ignoring the largest event simply because they don't really know what's going on, which is why the generations of gamers largely ignore the mainstream media already. (Which further explains why so many game designers and publishers attend PAX, so many that this year they are turning many smaller entities away, which is sad, but space is finite.)
E3's reign ended in 2006, it's just history and momentum that's keeping it barely alive (especially with major companies leaving the ESA and E3 behind, like Vivendi Universal and id Software). In a few more years everybody will realize it's second string.
PAX was meant to pacify the gamers that wanted to go to E3 [...]
So is your name secretly Jerry Holkins, Michael Krahulik, or Robert Khoo? How do you know what PAX was 'meant' to do? Speaking as somebody who was at the original PAX in 2004 for every hour it was open (including sleeping under the tables in the BYOC), I can say with certainty that PAX had little to do with E3. Jerry and Mike were very clear, PAX was a product of simply imagining the convention that they wanted and then making that happen. Why else would there be tabletop games? No such thing at E3. A huge elimination tournament the culminated in a 1v1 match of Pong? Never at E3. Movies and musical acts that would speak to gamer culture? Not what E3 is about. BYOC? Please.
PAX was never intended to be just some kind of public E3 analogue (like the dismal failure that E3 spun off to compete with PAX, E for All), otherwise it would be an expo floor and little else. PAX has always been about gamer culture, and if more and more game designers and publishers are onboard each year as well, that's fine too.
There is nothing in the Constitution about parties. The founding fathers, furthermore, wanted a no party system.
George Washington, for instance, said these things:
"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally."
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty."
"The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection."
John Adams:
"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
Thomas Paine:
"It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle."
Thomas Jefferson wasn't so much positive or negative about parties, as he was resigned to believe that they were inevitable. The important thing to take away is that parties were not part of the original design. Thanks to the First Amendment among other things, there simply was no way to prevent their formation and effect on the government. Once the parties were established, they passed various laws about how ballots could be constructed that keep the major parties in and the minor ones out.
My kingdom for some mod points.
I wish I could mod the parent informative. I wish it so hard it hurts.
Some progress? Like how Obama rubber-stamped continuing warrantless wiretapping? I knew the Democrats were full of BS when they complained about the PATRIOT Act and similar legislation. As soon as they achieved power, it's just business as usual.
Democrats AND Republicans are generally corrupt, ethically bankrupt scumbags who will do whatever it takes to keep their constituencies scared of each other and running and back and forth between the false dichotomy of the duopolostic political system. The reaction of both the Bush administration and the McCain campaign to the beginning of the recession was telling. The steps they took and the policies they outlined were virtually identical to the Democrats own ideas. It doesn't matter who is in power, every year government still grows out of control.
I stopped voting out of fear. People say voting for 3rd parties is a waste, but at least my conscious is clean, and there will never be any change until people stop worrying about 'wasting their vote' and start worrying about signing on to yet another backstabbing bandwagon.
Right, because people like Mark Allen Wilson are real scum, sacrificing their lives for strangers when they have no obligation to do anything at all. Many experts believe that his wildcard actions saved at least a couple lives and forced the crazed gunman to abort his attack and flee. Mark probably would have killed the jackass if it weren't for the bulletproof vest.
Word, I'm in Seattle, though I think this reflects worse on SPD than REI.
You do realize that quoting source material is the definitive opposite of revisionist right? Or do facts make your own revisionist views a little hard to bear?
I also don't see how the Night of the Long Knives says anything contradictory about the goals of the National Socialist German Workers Party or its broader political effects.
Sadly, various levels of government are banning transfats, and here in WA there are few places left where smoking is legal.
I like how you're so dead-set on not backing up your claims of 'evidence'. You'll of course ignore that statistics from surveys done in 1998 by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms show that 90% of violent crime in the US involve no firearms of any type, further the National Crime Victimization Survey done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 1994 showed that in crimes where the offender possessed a gun 83% of the time they neither used nor explicitly threatened to use it. The Uniform Crime Statistics of the FBI from 1994 have indicated that less than 1% of all firearms will ever be used in the commission of a crime, and also that fully two-thirds of those that die from gunshot wounds are convicted criminals who have been shot by other convicted criminals. Don't let any of these fact get in the way of how you 'feel' about the issue, you might actually have to think instead of grabbing an opinion out of the air.
.45 fullsize Var. C almost every day, and have done so since I was 21. And unless I talk about it, which is rare, nobody knows I have it. How can something that is invisible be threatening or rude? Far from threatening, I end up being a free bodyguard for everybody within reasonable distance. In all the years I've carried, I've never once had to draw on anybody, but if something were to happen nearby that appeared to be a threat of imminent or act of excessive violence, I would intervene. Maybe that's why Florida's homicide rate fell 40% after concealed carry was legalized. In Texas, murder rates fell 50% faster than the national average after their concealed carry law passed. Rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year after passage, 500% faster in the second. Assaults fell 250% faster in the second year. (Bureau of Justice Statistics 1995-2001) But feel free to keep sticking your fingers in your ears and ignoring the facts from objective sources. Keep believing and pushing the lies. Never mind that states that disallow concealed carry have violent crime rates 11% higher than the national average. (FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 2004) As far as I'm concerned, that increased bloodshed is on the hands of people like you who won't recognize that people who can defend themselves are safer.
Raising your voice is more threatening and rude than simply possessing a firearm. I carry an H&K USP
Finally, since you singled out handguns and were so quick to declare that you wouldn't back up your opinions (no doubt because if they have any source at all, it will be the discredited, wholly political, unethical things put out by interest groups like the Violence Policy Center that routinely defines 'children' as '23-year-old career felon gang members' just so they can make the number of 'children' killed by gunshots as high as possible), if you take statistics once more from the FBI Uniform Crime, CDC WISQARS, and the BATFE Firearms Commerce Report, you will find that while the number of privately owned handguns has more than doubled since 1970, the handgun homicide rate has fallen 25% since the same year. Quite simply there is no correlation, at all, whatsoever, between handgun ownership and the handgun homicide rate.
There are admittedly some similarities, especially when you get people who are a little nutty about it and start throwing out timelines just like religious nutjobs predicting the apocalypse on a given future date. Trying to predict any future is an act of belief/faith, because no future is a fact. Those who generalize are the most rational.
The key difference is that transhumanism envisions a future where mankind 'saves' itself rather than some deity popping in at some vague future time to use its omnipotence to save mankind from itself. It implicitly represents humanity's coming of age, kind of like collectively reaching an age of majority. Humanity is the first animal on the planet (so far as we know) to reach a stage of advancement such that it can step back, examine itself and its environment, and make a conscious, deliberate choice about how to evolve, short-cutting thousands of years of random genetic trial and error. We actually have the technology to do a lot of rudimentary artificial evolution right now, but collectively humanity seems to lack the confidence to try anything radical. Some people are still so mired in religion and superstition that they think such ideas are blasphemous (no! Santa Claus really is real! If we don't believe in him we won't get any presents!) while others are too squeamish about the necessary evils of experimentation and the risks it poses (even now people whine about animal testing, as though what some animal feels is important, but they'll gleefully squash bugs, kill weeds and bacteria all the time because they're damn subjective idiot hypocrites. Like there's some moral difference between the cute, fuzzy animals they like and the ugly lifeforms they hate).
Sadly it's going to take a few more generations for humanity to proverbially 'move out of mom & dad's house' ('one cannot stay in the cradle forever') both mentally and physically, but assuming that no religious jihad throws us into a sequel to the Dark Ages (which I think the internet thankfully makes impossible so long as the root servers don't fall into the wrong hands), humanity's collective maturity or singularity is inevitable. Whether we merge with machines or begin to design our genetics from the ground up, humanity will technically 'end' but will pass on its most valuable elements to the superior successor that it creates.