while not exactly the same thing you're dealing with, i am reminded of a no-compete agreement that was circulating in my company a while back.
basically, our parent company wanted us all to sign a no-compete agreement that basically said we couldn't work in IT after we had left (for one reason or another) said company. It was obviously a career destroyer, and we did have several people leave the company immediately upon seeing this agreement.
what did the rest of us do? exactly what every current employee of every company that wants to screw their employees do - tell them to go screw themselves.
This sounds like a very union-esque concept. and, perhaps, it is. But i can't stress enough the fact that if every employee of a company fails to sign an agreement (to do|not to do) X, then there's nothing the company can do. They can threaten all they want, they may even fire one or two people just to show how sharp their sword is. But, at the end of the day, the company will be forced to scrap the agreement.
I would have advised employees of our friends prospective employer to do the very same. That, combined with a very small influx of new personell might bitchslap the company upside the head and make them realize that their policies are unfair and aren't making them any friends in the software biz.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
you touch on an interesting point in your post. one that is often overlooked.
the "scramble" you allude to is certainly an apropos one. And you are, in fact, right. Most people will never understand the tech of the net (or at least, not in our lifetimes). However, your idea that issues should be dealt with by people that understand them is sort of a problematic one.
The people the public see as understanding do, in fact, understand what is going on. This, unfortunately, does not necessarily assume that they hold the same values. Just start talking about whether napster is good or bad - you'll start a flamewar. What about encryption? More of the same.
In general, the people with controlling interests in big business, government, and what-have-you have long ago burned their "geek" clothes in favor of newer, more disinterested duds. A CTO or CIO cannot be expected to have the same tech values as their more involved counterparts. That is not to say that they don't "know their shit," but that they have long ago proven to their superiors that they, to be honest, simply don't care as much, or have the same belief system. Everyone is succeptable to those corruptions, even geeks.
I agree with you though, that the use of metaphor is a futile one. Perhaps i should put it this way: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
I used to work at a local ISP in missouri. Hardly a day would pass that the owners wouldn't get offers from larger companies to buy them out. The reason our guys didn't sell was simple: they actually gave a shit about the customer. That, even in many mom and pop operations, is still a rare commodity.
My experience, however, is not simply limited to tech support for the greater missouri area. I also had the displeasure of working for a national provider (rhymes with AOHell;-)
The biggest difference between the two was personal accountability. When you work for an ISP that only has something like 10,000 customers, you can't afford to treat a single customer like shit. These people wind up calling back often (we all know the type of people who can't be pleased, or are dumb as rocks), and if you provide crappy service to a person in a small town, half the time you risk losing all customers in that town - i've seen it happen. At AOHell, it didn't matter. hell, AOL employs more tech support workers than that local ISP had customers. It didn't matter if you were a dick about something, the odds were strongly in your favor that the customer would never speak with you again, and %99.9 of them never even remembered the first name of the tech they spoke with. There was no personal accountability.
On the other side, there was also a question (very prominent these days) about legal procedings. There was only so much we were allowed to do when working for AOHell. Anything that wasn't explicitly supported was an absolute no-no. I worked in the windows side of the house, so troubleshooting even the simplest mac problems, or even a simple *nix question was forbidden. If i was talking to a customer who needed a CD and it came to light that they lived less than a mile from my call center, it was, of course, absolutely off-limits for them to come down and get one from us, much less even be told where our call center was specifically located. The local ISP i used to work for? We kept a store-front office for just such purposes. People would come down and drop off their bill, or even come buy to pick up install diskettes. Local dialups are allowed to play it much more loose because of the likelihood of getting sued. Just as you are required to know the customer, the customer knows you. A sort of mock-friendship evolves, and you don't have to worry about it. Places like AOL have never seen a day without some pissed off customer who got called an asshole by a tech suing them for everything they can get their grubby little hands on. The bigger the target, the greater the likelihood of getting sued, the greater the protections that must be put in place.
The bottom line is this: National ISP's don't know or care about the customer because A)they can't, and B) they're not expected to. There's a huge difference between talkin' to some woman named Yolanda in Batton Rouge that you know you'll never speak to again, and talking to Aunt May from down the street who you'll probably see the next time you go to the grocery store.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
that's not funny because it's an inflamed response at something that actually was funny. plus, it expected. that's a humor killer if ever there was one.
nice try though, apu.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Take everything you know about life and reconsider.(...) What is life, really?
Is this a question you claim to have the answer to? Do you think cloning is likely to change that answer?
no. and yes (insofar as the creation of life is concerned). The questions you have chosen to redirect towards me were the most easily answered of the bunch. Perhaps it would be wiser for you to think in slightly more abstract terms.
Can you honestly be so naieve as to belive that clones will walk around with an absolutely unaware public? Scientists will not create a group of 20 million clones immediately. It begins as one, then another, and so on and so forth, but the change is gradual: and i find it hard to believe that the famousness (or infamy, or awe, or any number of influencing aspects of clones) will make them stand out. Perhaps you think i am speaking on some science ficion-esque term here (as you have indicated by your allusion to Mary Shelly) with every clone being branded like cattle. But the though that clones will be thought of as equals among a jealous and generally irrational public is absurd. If you think it is possible for them to be "hidden" amongst society, well, i really don't want to write an essay on the invalidity of that idea.
I certainly am amused by your mention of Goodwin's Law. I am sure that you, as well as just about everybody else, realizes that it is simply a jest. The mention of hitler, or WWII, in any context does not immediately invalidate an argument. That being said, i think you need to re-read that section of my previous post. I am not abdicating responsibility by any means. I do agree that implicating science alone is a puerile concept in and of itself. I have seen a good deal too many intelligent arguments soured by the very same.
However, your argument is as fundamentally flawed as the inverse. While we cannot place a total and unwarranted blame on science, we cannot, conversly, allow a total abdication of responsibility on the part of "people of science." Pardon my being specific here, but the toppic warrants : i cannot pardon a man like Oppenheimer simply because it was technically Truman's decision to drop fat man and little boy. (Please feel free to argue that atomic weapons have saved more lives than they have taken, and i will feel free to laugh at your short-sightedness).
This kind of thing is nothing more than Frankenstein revisited. If you want to be a Luddite, fine. But
why drag the rest of us down into this morass of fear? Some of us prefer to look on every new discovery as an opportunity, instead of a reason to be afraid.
i find it to be a very quaint notion that we have this technology, so it's necessary that we immediately use it. That is, after all, your argument. No one has said (at least to my knowledge) that we could have cloned a human 20 years ago. My question: why not mull over the consequences of such an action as cloning for a little while longer? I'm not advocating being, as you so eloquently stated, a chicken little. I'm simply advocating caution. What we are talking about (as i have already mentioned) is a one way function. It is very easy to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. But to get it back in, is an entirely different matter.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
it's all well and good to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of something like this...but we do not, and cannot, know the full implications of human cloning. I think it's ridiculous to believe sci-fi views on the matter. No one is going to clone an army of uber-villains. But it's also ridiculous to believe that this isn't going to have a substantial impact on our worlds' culture.
Take everything you know about life and reconsider. Mom, how are babies made? What is life, really? Do clones have the same rights as any other human? Will this create a new sub-class of humans? Most likely. Can scientists fully control cloning? And there are a thousand more unanswered and highly debatable questions that we have yet to ask ourselves.
I agree that this is going to happen whether we like it or not, but i can't agree that this is going to be a good thing. Scientists are notorious for the proliferation of evil based on a sort of relative amorality. It becomes easy to abdicate responsibility for such attrocities as nuclear weapons, the hydrogen bomb, the holocaust (you think Hitler knew the best way to gas jews?), the list goes on. "It wasn't me!" the scientists cry. "How was i to know that this was to be used in such and such a way?" In truth, we are all scientists in some way, and, conversly, scientists are all members of the human race. And i cannot see a reason to let anyone evade responsibility for happenings as a direct result of their own actions. "The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray"
The answer to the question of "should we clone?" is most certainly no. We simply do not know enough about ourselves to do this. Petty squabbles over Michael Jordan sneakers, Wars over extremely small plots of land, murder, rape, discrimination, theivery. I cannot tell you whether cloning is morally wrong. Frankly, i do not know the answer to that question myself. But, if you ask me if this society is ready for it...if you ask me if we are far enough along, not technologically, but socially...the answer is no.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:My Generation's "Kennedy was Shot" moment
on
The Challenger
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· Score: 1
indeed. i'm not talking about gen-x. i'm talkin' about the generation that slipped between the cracks. namely: those who are currently between 18 and 25.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
hrm....anyone else find it ironic that the superbowl was played in....
Florida!
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:A moment of silence. . .
on
The Challenger
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· Score: 2
ok. a description of the parent post for the comparitively impaired:
Items like Hitler and Challenger are are added because they represent tragedies in the history of our culture. No one is trying to set "degrees of tragedy" on these items (and for you literalists, Felinoid wasn't saying the death of Hitler was a tragedy, (s)he was saying that the life of hitler was a tragedy. To be more succinct, killing people is bad, mmmmmkay.) - (s)he is simply stating that all of these things are tragedies that should be remembered.
while i disagree with the idea of the aformentioned post, i also disagree with the idea that these items cannot be compared. While i haven't stacked WWII up against the Challenger explosion with my trusty McDougal's Tragedy-o-meter, i am fairly sure that they were, in fact, horrible occurrances that warrant (if you're in to that sort of thing) a moment of silence.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:A moment of silence. . .
on
The Challenger
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· Score: 1
If you take the time to sit in silence, if only for a moment, for all of those who fought (and possibly died) for their country. Or those whose deaths were unnecessary then all your life you will do nothing but sit in silence.
Pardon my selfishness and egotism when i say this, but, i will remember the crew of the challenger, and my ancestors who fought in the revolutionary war, and my ancestors who fought in the civil war, and the war of 1812, and the veterans of the spanish-american war, and the veterans of WWI, and my two grandfathers who fought in WWII (and one in Korea) and my father who served during viet nam, and the veterans of those wars as well, and the veterans of the persian gulf war, and the veterans of the cold war, and gus grissam (and his crew-mates), and JFK, and martin luther king, and malcolm x, and ghandi, and EVERY OTHER PERSON WHO TRIED TO MAKE THIS WORLD A BETTER PLACE....
by trying to make this world a better place myself. i work to make my life a tribute to those people....so you'll pardon me if i don't have the time to take a moment of silence for them. You may continue to do so, if it pleases you, and i may continue to refrain from it, and we may BOTH continue to tell eachother which is right. Isn't that what they all fought for?
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"Or...you can run the kickoff back for a touchdown and i'll show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes"
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:dont compare that loser to JFK
on
The Challenger
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· Score: 1
i disagree. JFK was only around for three years (pardon the comparison) - but if we are to simply compare longevity than JFK wasn't really that great of a person i suppose (not to mention the bay of pigs, or marylin monroe: a subject matter which, mind you, got our recently departed president impeached). Point: Longevity has got nothing to do with greatness. Look at SRV, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, none of their life spans were very long either, but they all had a profound impact on not only rock and roll, but life. And two of them killed themselves.
BTW - i wasn't comparing Kurt Cobain to JFK in the first place. I was comparing him to the "where were you" that many were discussing. But thanks for the flame anyway.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:A moment of silence. . .
on
The Challenger
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· Score: 2
a moment of silence is not created out of past respect for something long forgotten...but out of something so horrible or beautiful as to never be forgotten. don't tarnish the memory of the challenger by something so trite and politically correct as a moment of silence.
my moment of silence for the challenger was on that cold january day. Today, my gift to her crew is a place in my heart, and the knowledge that they will never be forgotten.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Re:My Generation's "Kennedy was Shot" moment
on
The Challenger
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· Score: 1
do you remember where you were when you heard Kurt Cobain had killed himself?
i do.
the man defined the voice of a generation of seemingly forgotten individuals. I will remember him, not for the songs he played, but for the songs he wrote. I'm surprised no one had mentioned him in all of these threads.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
i se alot of psots about the corlletation of plaeing a lot of videyo gamze and doing poorly in youer studies.
as an englash major, i play alot of videyo gamze and i donot theenk they have hurt my studees one bit. as a mattar of fact, i theenk i have a signigifant advantege ovar my peers, beeng that i haev larned how to commnucitate in the infarmashun age (i no computars are the next big thing).
har har all of yuo hoo skoff at me. i will shooot yuo wiht a rale gun.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
i remember when i set up this big tussle between Optimus Prime and Skeletor. It was good. Skeletor took the first round, but just when Optimus looked defeated, he turned into this big ass truck ( i still can't figure that one out ) and wooped on skeletor.
Still this one would have been cool to watch...
FINISH HIM!....er...IT?....er...
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
the question of whether or not it's reasonable to inform on your peers is moot. of COURSE it's not reasonable.(in most circumstances. surely you would call the police or tell a teacher if a kid brought a gun to school)
that being said, you completely missed the point of my post. it has absolutely nothing to do with the justification of teens informing on their "depressed" peers. I'd try to spell it out, but surely you wouldn't understand. So much for digressionary posting for the uneducated.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
oh for christ's sake. that's the battle cry of every loser i have ever met.
"my parents beat me!"
"My dad never loved me!"
"I got beat up at school all the time!"
"I never had any friends!"
Guess what. I haven't met a single person yet who thought high-school was the best time of their lives. NO ONE LIKED HIGH-SCHOOL! Some people like to blither on mindlessly about how they had no clique in high-school. They had no friends, and were constantly being picked on by their peers and their teachers.
When are assinine fools like Jon Kats (and yourself) going to realize that high school sucked for just about everybody. None of us had that many friends, and most of them talked shit about us behind our backs....just like we did to them. And most of us thought of ourselves as go-betweens. Never had a clique? No one did. My highschool was a group of 2500 loners who were just too stupid to realize it. Why? Because that's what groing up is all about. Alienation!
You're supposed to feel like shit in high-school. You're a fuckin' teenager. I remember something about a transition from childhood to adulthood, or something?!?!?! somewhere?!?!? Growing up is a pain in the ass. you learn %90 of your life lessons between the age of 13-21. Guess what...it's going to hurt. Remember how you found you were supposed to be extremely careful with a knife? you cut yourself on it! Now take 100,000 more lessons like that and cram them into a span of 6 or 7 years...and poof. you're a teenager.
Teenagers have been experiencing heartbrake and pain, and alienation, and physical "abuse" since before recorded history. The only difference between todays kids, and the kids of 30 years ago is that, today, our teens are told they are not responsible for feeling like outsiders. Today, it is not their fault that life sucks. 30 years ago, you shut up and dealt with it.
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Slashdot Mirror
while not exactly the same thing you're dealing with, i am reminded of a no-compete agreement that was circulating in my company a while back.
basically, our parent company wanted us all to sign a no-compete agreement that basically said we couldn't work in IT after we had left (for one reason or another) said company. It was obviously a career destroyer, and we did have several people leave the company immediately upon seeing this agreement.
what did the rest of us do? exactly what every current employee of every company that wants to screw their employees do - tell them to go screw themselves.
This sounds like a very union-esque concept. and, perhaps, it is. But i can't stress enough the fact that if every employee of a company fails to sign an agreement (to do|not to do) X, then there's nothing the company can do. They can threaten all they want, they may even fire one or two people just to show how sharp their sword is. But, at the end of the day, the company will be forced to scrap the agreement.
I would have advised employees of our friends prospective employer to do the very same. That, combined with a very small influx of new personell might bitchslap the company upside the head and make them realize that their policies are unfair and aren't making them any friends in the software biz.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
what about the "Scotch" in scotch tape?
aye laddie. We're about to put the sue on you far yar blaytant infringemunt of ayre tlademallk.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Have they sued the makers of all *nix OSes yet for putting infringing statements in places like:
/etc/services
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
good lord young man.
you win the prize for funniest post of the day. someone mod this up.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
you touch on an interesting point in your post. one that is often overlooked.
the "scramble" you allude to is certainly an apropos one. And you are, in fact, right. Most people will never understand the tech of the net (or at least, not in our lifetimes). However, your idea that issues should be dealt with by people that understand them is sort of a problematic one.
The people the public see as understanding do, in fact, understand what is going on. This, unfortunately, does not necessarily assume that they hold the same values. Just start talking about whether napster is good or bad - you'll start a flamewar. What about encryption? More of the same.
In general, the people with controlling interests in big business, government, and what-have-you have long ago burned their "geek" clothes in favor of newer, more disinterested duds. A CTO or CIO cannot be expected to have the same tech values as their more involved counterparts. That is not to say that they don't "know their shit," but that they have long ago proven to their superiors that they, to be honest, simply don't care as much, or have the same belief system. Everyone is succeptable to those corruptions, even geeks.
I agree with you though, that the use of metaphor is a futile one. Perhaps i should put it this way: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
I used to work at a local ISP in missouri. Hardly a day would pass that the owners wouldn't get offers from larger companies to buy them out. The reason our guys didn't sell was simple: they actually gave a shit about the customer. That, even in many mom and pop operations, is still a rare commodity.
;-)
My experience, however, is not simply limited to tech support for the greater missouri area. I also had the displeasure of working for a national provider (rhymes with AOHell
The biggest difference between the two was personal accountability. When you work for an ISP that only has something like 10,000 customers, you can't afford to treat a single customer like shit. These people wind up calling back often (we all know the type of people who can't be pleased, or are dumb as rocks), and if you provide crappy service to a person in a small town, half the time you risk losing all customers in that town - i've seen it happen. At AOHell, it didn't matter. hell, AOL employs more tech support workers than that local ISP had customers. It didn't matter if you were a dick about something, the odds were strongly in your favor that the customer would never speak with you again, and %99.9 of them never even remembered the first name of the tech they spoke with. There was no personal accountability.
On the other side, there was also a question (very prominent these days) about legal procedings. There was only so much we were allowed to do when working for AOHell. Anything that wasn't explicitly supported was an absolute no-no. I worked in the windows side of the house, so troubleshooting even the simplest mac problems, or even a simple *nix question was forbidden. If i was talking to a customer who needed a CD and it came to light that they lived less than a mile from my call center, it was, of course, absolutely off-limits for them to come down and get one from us, much less even be told where our call center was specifically located. The local ISP i used to work for? We kept a store-front office for just such purposes. People would come down and drop off their bill, or even come buy to pick up install diskettes. Local dialups are allowed to play it much more loose because of the likelihood of getting sued. Just as you are required to know the customer, the customer knows you. A sort of mock-friendship evolves, and you don't have to worry about it. Places like AOL have never seen a day without some pissed off customer who got called an asshole by a tech suing them for everything they can get their grubby little hands on. The bigger the target, the greater the likelihood of getting sued, the greater the protections that must be put in place.
The bottom line is this: National ISP's don't know or care about the customer because A)they can't, and B) they're not expected to. There's a huge difference between talkin' to some woman named Yolanda in Batton Rouge that you know you'll never speak to again, and talking to Aunt May from down the street who you'll probably see the next time you go to the grocery store.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
it sounds to me like you need to start taking those anger management classes again, butch.
wanna hear a irish joke?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
that's not funny because it's an inflamed response at something that actually was funny. plus, it expected. that's a humor killer if ever there was one.
nice try though, apu.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
if you look for racism and bigotry with too much vigor, you will find it everywhere.
thanks for contributing to a world so PC, we're not even allowed to laugh at ourselves.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Colt M4A1 Carbine: $3100
Kevlar Vest and Helmet: $1000
Flashbang: $250
Forgetting to wear pants to work...
Priceless!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Take everything you know about life and reconsider.(...) What is life, really?
Is this a question you claim to have the answer to? Do you think cloning is likely to change that answer?
no. and yes (insofar as the creation of life is concerned). The questions you have chosen to redirect towards me were the most easily answered of the bunch. Perhaps it would be wiser for you to think in slightly more abstract terms.
Can you honestly be so naieve as to belive that clones will walk around with an absolutely unaware public? Scientists will not create a group of 20 million clones immediately. It begins as one, then another, and so on and so forth, but the change is gradual: and i find it hard to believe that the famousness (or infamy, or awe, or any number of influencing aspects of clones) will make them stand out. Perhaps you think i am speaking on some science ficion-esque term here (as you have indicated by your allusion to Mary Shelly) with every clone being branded like cattle. But the though that clones will be thought of as equals among a jealous and generally irrational public is absurd. If you think it is possible for them to be "hidden" amongst society, well, i really don't want to write an essay on the invalidity of that idea.
I certainly am amused by your mention of Goodwin's Law. I am sure that you, as well as just about everybody else, realizes that it is simply a jest. The mention of hitler, or WWII, in any context does not immediately invalidate an argument. That being said, i think you need to re-read that section of my previous post. I am not abdicating responsibility by any means. I do agree that implicating science alone is a puerile concept in and of itself. I have seen a good deal too many intelligent arguments soured by the very same.
However, your argument is as fundamentally flawed as the inverse. While we cannot place a total and unwarranted blame on science, we cannot, conversly, allow a total abdication of responsibility on the part of "people of science." Pardon my being specific here, but the toppic warrants : i cannot pardon a man like Oppenheimer simply because it was technically Truman's decision to drop fat man and little boy. (Please feel free to argue that atomic weapons have saved more lives than they have taken, and i will feel free to laugh at your short-sightedness).
This kind of thing is nothing more than Frankenstein revisited. If you want to be a Luddite, fine. But why drag the rest of us down into this morass of fear? Some of us prefer to look on every new discovery as an opportunity, instead of a reason to be afraid.
i find it to be a very quaint notion that we have this technology, so it's necessary that we immediately use it. That is, after all, your argument. No one has said (at least to my knowledge) that we could have cloned a human 20 years ago. My question: why not mull over the consequences of such an action as cloning for a little while longer? I'm not advocating being, as you so eloquently stated, a chicken little. I'm simply advocating caution. What we are talking about (as i have already mentioned) is a one way function. It is very easy to let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. But to get it back in, is an entirely different matter.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Pandora's Box.
it's all well and good to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of something like this...but we do not, and cannot, know the full implications of human cloning. I think it's ridiculous to believe sci-fi views on the matter. No one is going to clone an army of uber-villains. But it's also ridiculous to believe that this isn't going to have a substantial impact on our worlds' culture.
Take everything you know about life and reconsider. Mom, how are babies made? What is life, really? Do clones have the same rights as any other human? Will this create a new sub-class of humans? Most likely. Can scientists fully control cloning? And there are a thousand more unanswered and highly debatable questions that we have yet to ask ourselves.
I agree that this is going to happen whether we like it or not, but i can't agree that this is going to be a good thing. Scientists are notorious for the proliferation of evil based on a sort of relative amorality. It becomes easy to abdicate responsibility for such attrocities as nuclear weapons, the hydrogen bomb, the holocaust (you think Hitler knew the best way to gas jews?), the list goes on. "It wasn't me!" the scientists cry. "How was i to know that this was to be used in such and such a way?" In truth, we are all scientists in some way, and, conversly, scientists are all members of the human race. And i cannot see a reason to let anyone evade responsibility for happenings as a direct result of their own actions. "The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray"
The answer to the question of "should we clone?" is most certainly no. We simply do not know enough about ourselves to do this. Petty squabbles over Michael Jordan sneakers, Wars over extremely small plots of land, murder, rape, discrimination, theivery. I cannot tell you whether cloning is morally wrong. Frankly, i do not know the answer to that question myself. But, if you ask me if this society is ready for it...if you ask me if we are far enough along, not technologically, but socially...the answer is no.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
indeed. i'm not talking about gen-x. i'm talkin' about the generation that slipped between the cracks. namely: those who are currently between 18 and 25.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
hrm....anyone else find it ironic that the superbowl was played in....
Florida!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
ok. a description of the parent post for the comparitively impaired:
Items like Hitler and Challenger are are added because they represent tragedies in the history of our culture. No one is trying to set "degrees of tragedy" on these items (and for you literalists, Felinoid wasn't saying the death of Hitler was a tragedy, (s)he was saying that the life of hitler was a tragedy. To be more succinct, killing people is bad, mmmmmkay.) - (s)he is simply stating that all of these things are tragedies that should be remembered.
while i disagree with the idea of the aformentioned post, i also disagree with the idea that these items cannot be compared. While i haven't stacked WWII up against the Challenger explosion with my trusty McDougal's Tragedy-o-meter, i am fairly sure that they were, in fact, horrible occurrances that warrant (if you're in to that sort of thing) a moment of silence.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
If you take the time to sit in silence, if only for a moment, for all of those who fought (and possibly died) for their country. Or those whose deaths were unnecessary then all your life you will do nothing but sit in silence.
Pardon my selfishness and egotism when i say this, but, i will remember the crew of the challenger, and my ancestors who fought in the revolutionary war, and my ancestors who fought in the civil war, and the war of 1812, and the veterans of the spanish-american war, and the veterans of WWI, and my two grandfathers who fought in WWII (and one in Korea) and my father who served during viet nam, and the veterans of those wars as well, and the veterans of the persian gulf war, and the veterans of the cold war, and gus grissam (and his crew-mates), and JFK, and martin luther king, and malcolm x, and ghandi, and EVERY OTHER PERSON WHO TRIED TO MAKE THIS WORLD A BETTER PLACE....
by trying to make this world a better place myself. i work to make my life a tribute to those people....so you'll pardon me if i don't have the time to take a moment of silence for them. You may continue to do so, if it pleases you, and i may continue to refrain from it, and we may BOTH continue to tell eachother which is right. Isn't that what they all fought for?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
WTF was up w/ the 3d shit going on there.
"You can punt the ball, and stay in wonderland."
"Or...you can run the kickoff back for a touchdown and i'll show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes"
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
i disagree. JFK was only around for three years (pardon the comparison) - but if we are to simply compare longevity than JFK wasn't really that great of a person i suppose (not to mention the bay of pigs, or marylin monroe: a subject matter which, mind you, got our recently departed president impeached). Point: Longevity has got nothing to do with greatness. Look at SRV, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, none of their life spans were very long either, but they all had a profound impact on not only rock and roll, but life. And two of them killed themselves.
BTW - i wasn't comparing Kurt Cobain to JFK in the first place. I was comparing him to the "where were you" that many were discussing. But thanks for the flame anyway.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
a moment of silence is not created out of past respect for something long forgotten...but out of something so horrible or beautiful as to never be forgotten. don't tarnish the memory of the challenger by something so trite and politically correct as a moment of silence.
my moment of silence for the challenger was on that cold january day. Today, my gift to her crew is a place in my heart, and the knowledge that they will never be forgotten.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
do you remember where you were when you heard Kurt Cobain had killed himself?
i do.
the man defined the voice of a generation of seemingly forgotten individuals. I will remember him, not for the songs he played, but for the songs he wrote. I'm surprised no one had mentioned him in all of these threads.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
i se alot of psots about the corlletation of plaeing a lot of videyo gamze and doing poorly in youer studies.
as an englash major, i play alot of videyo gamze and i donot theenk they have hurt my studees one bit. as a mattar of fact, i theenk i have a signigifant advantege ovar my peers, beeng that i haev larned how to commnucitate in the infarmashun age (i no computars are the next big thing).
har har all of yuo hoo skoff at me. i will shooot yuo wiht a rale gun.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
i remember when i set up this big tussle between Optimus Prime and Skeletor. It was good. Skeletor took the first round, but just when Optimus looked defeated, he turned into this big ass truck ( i still can't figure that one out ) and wooped on skeletor.
Still this one would have been cool to watch...
FINISH HIM!....er...IT?....er...
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
the question of whether or not it's reasonable to inform on your peers is moot. of COURSE it's not reasonable.(in most circumstances. surely you would call the police or tell a teacher if a kid brought a gun to school)
that being said, you completely missed the point of my post. it has absolutely nothing to do with the justification of teens informing on their "depressed" peers. I'd try to spell it out, but surely you wouldn't understand. So much for digressionary posting for the uneducated.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
oh for christ's sake. that's the battle cry of every loser i have ever met.
"my parents beat me!"
"My dad never loved me!"
"I got beat up at school all the time!"
"I never had any friends!"
Guess what. I haven't met a single person yet who thought high-school was the best time of their lives. NO ONE LIKED HIGH-SCHOOL! Some people like to blither on mindlessly about how they had no clique in high-school. They had no friends, and were constantly being picked on by their peers and their teachers.
When are assinine fools like Jon Kats (and yourself) going to realize that high school sucked for just about everybody. None of us had that many friends, and most of them talked shit about us behind our backs....just like we did to them. And most of us thought of ourselves as go-betweens. Never had a clique? No one did. My highschool was a group of 2500 loners who were just too stupid to realize it. Why? Because that's what groing up is all about. Alienation!
You're supposed to feel like shit in high-school. You're a fuckin' teenager. I remember something about a transition from childhood to adulthood, or something?!?!?! somewhere?!?!? Growing up is a pain in the ass. you learn %90 of your life lessons between the age of 13-21. Guess what...it's going to hurt. Remember how you found you were supposed to be extremely careful with a knife? you cut yourself on it! Now take 100,000 more lessons like that and cram them into a span of 6 or 7 years...and poof. you're a teenager.
Teenagers have been experiencing heartbrake and pain, and alienation, and physical "abuse" since before recorded history. The only difference between todays kids, and the kids of 30 years ago is that, today, our teens are told they are not responsible for feeling like outsiders. Today, it is not their fault that life sucks. 30 years ago, you shut up and dealt with it.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
lol. seattle ain't nowhere NEAR as bad as here in Denver.
i got 2000 square feet to heat, and if it gets above 45 here, we break out shorts.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network