"Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It's really great fun to go someplace where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have *lots of time*. Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard."
-The Tao of Pooh
I wouldn't mind everyone insisting on speed and immediate satisfaction if it wasn't for the fact that they end up stressing out those of us who realize how worthless it all is in the end.
Where is it written that political satire has to be subtle? I remember when they ran one series that was against the drug war (which was a pretty unpopular stance at the time) that was great. It told the tale of creating a successful hair tonic out of Bill the Cat's sweat which had unfortunate side-effects *ACK!*. Because of this it was outlawed, the prices went sky-high on the black market, and it began to be controlled by gangs. Subtle? No. Funny? Hell yeah. And the criticisms it represented are becoming more and more popular every day as people are considering what a waste the Drug War actually has become.
When I started getting interested in the comic as a youngster, I knew very little about the political satire it talked about. But I still loved it because it made me laugh (sometimes uncontrollably) anyways. That's the difference between Breathed and Trudeau. Doonesbury is repetitious and boring. Never laughed at it when I was young and I don't laugh at it now.
You mentioned Dilbert, which is good, but it's missing something important. It's missing the childlike, brilliant imagination of Bloom County. Binkley's anxiety closet is a good example of it. If all of today's comics were dry comedies about work place drudgery then I think I'd have to kill myself.
I'm sorry but if you don't think Bloom County was funny then there's only two explanations for it. 1) You and your fellow Young Republicans didn't appreciate the political humor (hey at least I can appreciate Ben Stein without getting in a huff) or 2) you have no imagination and possibly no pulse.
I mean it started out great, and then the whole thing was ruined by the ending. I have no idea how the movie ends (I'm avoiding it because of the book) but the book took all the character development work on Clarice Starling from 2 novels and wasted it. The quality of the Hannibal Lecter related books went something like this...
Red Dragon was pretty good.
Silence of the Lambs was fantastic.
Hannibal started promising and ended as a dog.
Dammit! And I was so looking forward to the extinction of our race. If anything, we should be planning for a fiery apocolypse rather than gradually dying out. We should be flung directly into the sun. Now that's action! Who needs more of this clockwork, machine existence we've made for ourselves.
-Tyler
"Birds and deer are a silly luxury and all of the fish should be floating."
I'm hoping that this will help in finding a cure for Crohn's Disease. It seems that my immune system is having an inappropriate response to something which absolutely wreaks havoc on my large intestine unless I'm taking medication for it. (Don't know what my body wants to protect me from, but it can't be worth the destruction of my digestive track. I kinda need that).
Getting off Prednisone permanently would be a plus, too.
-Tyler
"If you had a choice between being God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?"
The Libertarian would oppose government regulation of harmful corporations. That doesn't mean that they can't dislike certain corporations. Corporations become powerful because people expect to depend on them without getting involved or acquiring any knowledge about what they're paying for. They think, just throw money somewhere, and the problem is solved.
Don't want to get ripped off by an auto mechanic? Learn about how a car works. That way you can more easily sniff out if you're getting a raw deal. Pissed off about outrageous fees and/or bugs in Microsoft products? Easy. Learn to use Linux to do the same types of thing, then quitcherbitchin.
In the end (as indirect as it may be) it's consumer's attitudes and apathy that causes problems. (And the same things cause problems in Democratic governments as well). Depending on an abstract entity such as government to regulate corporations just pushes the problems these attitudes cause somewhere else and robs us of hands-on direct knowledge of the workings of the world around us.
-Tyler
"I wish that Microsoft would win the anti-trust case. That way, when they lose in the market, they'll have no one to blame but themselves."
Well, what if we had non-profit organizations that would check into how safe drugs about to be released are? I know I wouldn't buy drugs from a company who didn't have them tested by outside forces beforehand. If some big pharma lied about what was tested or released something they knew to be unsafe, then I'm fairly sure a Libertarian would consider that to be punishable criminal activity. (That's why I feel that tobacco companies should be punished for lying about the dangers and addictiveness of their products, but not be punished for marketing them to kids. Either parents or the kids can take the time to evaluate the risks. If they don't, then it's their problem.)
FDA or no FDA, if the general public knew that a pharmaceutical company was trying to pull the shit that you mentioned then the public at large would be outraged, and their business would take a serious hit. One way or another, if people keep themselves informed, greedy people who don't play nice get theirs one way or another.
I think The Gulf War/oil situation is one of the best reasons for looking for alternative energy sources I've ever heard. (And the pollution problem's a pretty big one in itself). If we weren't dependent on oil, a huge chunk of our dependence on butting our heads into the affairs of others would disappear.
Why do you think so many terrorist groups have our number? If we could get out of their affairs then they'd have no one to blame about their situations than themselves.
Well, as an Anarchist myself, I consider the Libertarian Party as the best step to take in the right direction. I agree that if people are not enlightened individuals who can be swayed easily by propaganda then libertarianism doesn't work. But that's a social issue, not a government issue.
Me personally, I want to push a Libertarian agenda on the government front and put a lot of support on non-profit organizations and other causes I feel are worthy on the other front. If enough people can get involved and are convinced to care about how things are run then, who know?, we might not need a government at all after that.
Harry Browne thinks that the War on Drugs is a sham, is against the death penalty, is against any limits on immigration, and the list goes on. These are not views commonly held by the Republicans. If he joined that party much of the things that makes him a worthy candidate would be negated. The general Republican loves to have their noses in our personal lives. (Religious Right anybody?).
The Democrats would get government out of our personal lives and into social programs and the regulation of businesses. They seem like worthy causes, until one realizes that it ends with us becoming dependent on bloated organziations and that could create greater evils than what they were meant to solve in the first place.
The major parties are a sham, and they will continue to be shams as long as we support them. VOTE FOR WHO YOU THINK IS MOST QUALIFIED! It's that simple. The chance that your 1 measely vote will change the course of the election is infintesimal. It is not very newsworthy in the long term if either Bush or Gore is elected president. If a significant number of people vote outside of the major parties, that is significant. Even if your guy isn't elected, if you can convince enough people to vote outside the major parties, your influence will carry more weight.
No offense. Both make great points and are fine 3rd party possibilites, but the two ideologies are as opposite as you can get. Nader leans toward socialist solutions while those offered by Browne are laissez faire (my spelling on this is horribly mangled). Kind of strange for you to have these 2 as such close possibilities for you.
Me personally, I'm going for Harry Browne. I know a lot of friends of mine who are going for Nader. But whoever it is, for God's sake, let's avoid the two major parties here. I swear it sometimes seems like they were created to give people an excuse to stop thinking for themselves.
Oh I get your point, and I agree with most of it. I just had to balk at the Dylan thing. Am I biased towards him? Sure. But it all has to do with merits. I wasn't born until '73, so it's not like I'm looking back at a time I remember from my youth with nostalgia to come to my conclusion.
As for the Doors, I have to disagree with you that someone else would have just come in to do the same type of thing they did. Each innovative artist had a distinctive thing to offer. It's just because we've lived with their influence for a while that we take for granted how they changed music. We don't even notice the influence anymore. Take hip-hop music, for instance. When it first came out, you'd notice its influence in any new music you heard. It's influence in songs now is so ubiquitous (for both better and worse) that we can't even hear it anymore. Same with The Doors. If The Doors hadn't come out when they did, music probably would have been a lot more different now than you might think. It's hard to say if they'd be innovative if they came out now or if they'd be doing the same thing. Same goes for Dylan.
Bob Dylan is an acquired taste. The old stuff is often bare-bones guitar and of course everyone complains about his voice. But in my opinion, if someone gets over these things with time the rewards of enjoying both the lyricism AND the music are great. It kind of reminds me of appreciation of Guinness. (Sorry, I know it comes down to opinion. I just had to make the effort.):)
Right now it seems like a huge majority of arcades break down into Gun Games or Fighting Games (of the Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Soul Edge variety). That and more than a few Driving Games.
Don't get me wrong, there's great new stuff in each category (the Time Crisis and Silent Scope stuff are great Gun Games). But I want innovation in another direction.
Any Strider fans out there? How about Smash TV? Now *those* were fun and innovative. I'm sick of people rehashing the same old formulas. I love playing a game that makes you feel like you're absorbed in a whole other world, and I just don't feel that they're making those anymore.
They ought to have a book or TV program or something to talk about what the best/most innovative arcades in history are. Anyone know of any?
Is this some kind of a joke? Name one folk musician today that is anywhere close to Dylan at his height. Who do we have to look to today, Jewel? Both Dylan's lyrics and songwriting ability is without equal. When it comes to folk legacy, probably Woody Guthrie's is better, but that was a long time ago.
If Dylan came out today writing on the same topics he was then, then sure he wouldn't be too groundbreaking, but that's just because the topics are different. Regardless, the songs he wrote are still among the best that rock/folk music has to offer.
In case you haven't done so already, pick up a copy of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" to hear what real music sounds like.
-- But that's precisely why they're interesting to non-geeks (and especially interesting to geeks with social skills on a par with normal people; eg, the kind of geeks who "get" what it means to be a social being) - because you don't have fixed theories that X is 1 and pKa is.00479: you have fuzzy things like voting patterns and perceptions and other characteristics that, if you can't see them, seem like religious poppycock ("why would people vote for a charismatic but unqualified candidate??"why, indeed...)--
It's not the "why do people vote the way they do" type of stuff I consider religious poppycock. It's the arguments/tactics that politicians use to get votes that I consider religious poppycock. Any idiot can tell you why people have voted the way they do. It's because the reason why they make their choice is often so poor that my social conscience tends to wilt. It's difficult for me to sympathize with a society that makes choices based on irrational motivations. (And then have the nerve to bitch after they find that their political decisions didn't pan out).
--Science may be more precise, but at the same time, it's a limitation that bores a great many people... it's too bad most geeks such as yourself think that that's the end, not the beginning.--
I agree that it's a beginning. But barely anyone even bothers to begin there. Actually, I think many people aren't interested in Science or Math because they don't like a subject which can prove that they are wrong. It's tough for some people to admit their mistakes. And because of that, we get politicians who can twist and double-talk until they make it seem like they are right without even knowing what they're doing. IMHO, people who are interested in science/math/computers would be a lot less likely to do so.
>> But that's precisely why they're interesting to non-geeks (and especially interesting to geeks with social skills on a par with normal people; eg, the kind of geeks who "get" what it means to be a social being) - because you don't have fixed theories that X is 1 and pKa is.00479: you have fuzzy things like voting patterns and perceptions and other characteristics that, if you can't see them, seem like religious poppycock ("why would people vote for a charismatic but unqualified candidate??"why, indeed...)>Science may be more precise, but at the same time, it's a limitation that bores a great many people... it's too bad most geeks such as yourself think that that's the end, not the beginning.
I agree that it's a beginning. But barely anyone even bothers to begin there. Actually, I think many people aren't interested in Science or Math because they don't like a subject which can prove that they are wrong. It's tough for some people to admit their mistakes. And because of that, we get politicians that who can twist and double-talk until they make it seem like they are right. Try that in Math and see how far it gets you.
In my opinion, part of the reasons why us geeks have just a passing interest/understanding of political issues is because of the high level of BS that seems to go around in *ANY* level of discussion on the topic.
A lot of "knowledge" (possibly the majority of knowledge) we humans exchange has such a high level of dogma, misrepresentations, and pettiness included within it that you can never tell what to believe, no matter how much time one spends on the topic.
Now Mathematics, Physics, and so forth, are much more certain prospects. I don't give a shit what your personal opionion is on the Pythagorean Theorem. I know the proof, so any opinion someone offers otherwise I can ignore without a second thought.
Programming is the same sort of thing. Don't believe my algorithm will work? Well here's the program I created, notice how it works, now get the fuck out of my face.
It's disturbing the type of subjects which get the word "science" put after them. Political "Science"? Don't make me laugh. Social "Sciences"? Please! Give me Physics. Give me Math. Give me Chemistry. Give me Computers. They're not always correct. But they give you definite theories and experiments to test said theories. What politician can posssibly offer me the same?
Better solution. 1. Get "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" 2. Buy it. 3. Read it. 4. Throw "Atlas Shrugged" in the garbage. Someone should have told Ayn Rand that egoism is a shallow goal. Using it as the prime motivator leads to shallow work and results. Could have saved a lot of trees that way.
"Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It's really great fun to go someplace where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have *lots of time*. Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard."
Slashdot Mirror
"Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It's really great fun to go someplace where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have *lots of time*. Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard."
-The Tao of Pooh
I wouldn't mind everyone insisting on speed and immediate satisfaction if it wasn't for the fact that they end up stressing out those of us who realize how worthless it all is in the end.
Where is it written that political satire has to be subtle? I remember when they ran one series that was against the drug war (which was a pretty unpopular stance at the time) that was great. It told the tale of creating a successful hair tonic out of Bill the Cat's sweat which had unfortunate side-effects *ACK!*. Because of this it was outlawed, the prices went sky-high on the black market, and it began to be controlled by gangs. Subtle? No. Funny? Hell yeah. And the criticisms it represented are becoming more and more popular every day as people are considering what a waste the Drug War actually has become.
When I started getting interested in the comic as a youngster, I knew very little about the political satire it talked about. But I still loved it because it made me laugh (sometimes uncontrollably) anyways. That's the difference between Breathed and Trudeau. Doonesbury is repetitious and boring. Never laughed at it when I was young and I don't laugh at it now.
You mentioned Dilbert, which is good, but it's missing something important. It's missing the childlike, brilliant imagination of Bloom County. Binkley's anxiety closet is a good example of it. If all of today's comics were dry comedies about work place drudgery then I think I'd have to kill myself.
I'm sorry but if you don't think Bloom County was funny then there's only two explanations for it. 1) You and your fellow Young Republicans didn't appreciate the political humor (hey at least I can appreciate Ben Stein without getting in a huff) or 2) you have no imagination and possibly no pulse.
-Tyler
I mean it started out great, and then the whole thing was ruined by the ending. I have no idea how the movie ends (I'm avoiding it because of the book) but the book took all the character development work on Clarice Starling from 2 novels and wasted it. The quality of the Hannibal Lecter related books went something like this...
Red Dragon was pretty good.
Silence of the Lambs was fantastic.
Hannibal started promising and ended as a dog.
A real shame.
Dammit! And I was so looking forward to the extinction of our race. If anything, we should be planning for a fiery apocolypse rather than gradually dying out. We should be flung directly into the sun. Now that's action! Who needs more of this clockwork, machine existence we've made for ourselves.
-Tyler
"Birds and deer are a silly luxury and all of the fish should be floating."
I'm hoping that this will help in finding a cure for Crohn's Disease. It seems that my immune system is having an inappropriate response to something which absolutely wreaks havoc on my large intestine unless I'm taking medication for it. (Don't know what my body wants to protect me from, but it can't be worth the destruction of my digestive track. I kinda need that).
Getting off Prednisone permanently would be a plus, too.
-Tyler
"If you had a choice between being God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?"
The Libertarian would oppose government regulation of harmful corporations. That doesn't mean that they can't dislike certain corporations. Corporations become powerful because people expect to depend on them without getting involved or acquiring any knowledge about what they're paying for. They think, just throw money somewhere, and the problem is solved.
Don't want to get ripped off by an auto mechanic? Learn about how a car works. That way you can more easily sniff out if you're getting a raw deal. Pissed off about outrageous fees and/or bugs in Microsoft products? Easy. Learn to use Linux to do the same types of thing, then quitcherbitchin.
In the end (as indirect as it may be) it's consumer's attitudes and apathy that causes problems. (And the same things cause problems in Democratic governments as well). Depending on an abstract entity such as government to regulate corporations just pushes the problems these attitudes cause somewhere else and robs us of hands-on direct knowledge of the workings of the world around us.
-Tyler
"I wish that Microsoft would win the anti-trust case. That way, when they lose in the market, they'll have no one to blame but themselves."
Hopefully the French will be allowed to buy any white flags on auction. I hear that their military is always in high demand of them.
OK Spacemonkeys, time to make soap!!!
Well, what if we had non-profit organizations that would check into how safe drugs about to be released are? I know I wouldn't buy drugs from a company who didn't have them tested by outside forces beforehand. If some big pharma lied about what was tested or released something they knew to be unsafe, then I'm fairly sure a Libertarian would consider that to be punishable criminal activity. (That's why I feel that tobacco companies should be punished for lying about the dangers and addictiveness of their products, but not be punished for marketing them to kids. Either parents or the kids can take the time to evaluate the risks. If they don't, then it's their problem.)
FDA or no FDA, if the general public knew that a pharmaceutical company was trying to pull the shit that you mentioned then the public at large would be outraged, and their business would take a serious hit. One way or another, if people keep themselves informed, greedy people who don't play nice get theirs one way or another.
Just thinking out loud.
I think The Gulf War/oil situation is one of the best reasons for looking for alternative energy sources I've ever heard. (And the pollution problem's a pretty big one in itself). If we weren't dependent on oil, a huge chunk of our dependence on butting our heads into the affairs of others would disappear.
Why do you think so many terrorist groups have our number? If we could get out of their affairs then they'd have no one to blame about their situations than themselves.
Well, as an Anarchist myself, I consider the Libertarian Party as the best step to take in the right direction. I agree that if people are not enlightened individuals who can be swayed easily by propaganda then libertarianism doesn't work. But that's a social issue, not a government issue.
:)
Me personally, I want to push a Libertarian agenda on the government front and put a lot of support on non-profit organizations and other causes I feel are worthy on the other front. If enough people can get involved and are convinced to care about how things are run then, who know?, we might not need a government at all after that.
Call me a Neo-Anarchist.
Harry Browne thinks that the War on Drugs is a sham, is against the death penalty, is against any limits on immigration, and the list goes on. These are not views commonly held by the Republicans. If he joined that party much of the things that makes him a worthy candidate would be negated. The general Republican loves to have their noses in our personal lives. (Religious Right anybody?).
The Democrats would get government out of our personal lives and into social programs and the regulation of businesses. They seem like worthy causes, until one realizes that it ends with us becoming dependent on bloated organziations and that could create greater evils than what they were meant to solve in the first place.
The major parties are a sham, and they will continue to be shams as long as we support them. VOTE FOR WHO YOU THINK IS MOST QUALIFIED! It's that simple. The chance that your 1 measely vote will change the course of the election is infintesimal. It is not very newsworthy in the long term if either Bush or Gore is elected president. If a significant number of people vote outside of the major parties, that is significant. Even if your guy isn't elected, if you can convince enough people to vote outside the major parties, your influence will carry more weight.
No offense. Both make great points and are fine 3rd party possibilites, but the two ideologies are as opposite as you can get. Nader leans toward socialist solutions while those offered by Browne are laissez faire (my spelling on this is horribly mangled). Kind of strange for you to have these 2 as such close possibilities for you.
Me personally, I'm going for Harry Browne. I know a lot of friends of mine who are going for Nader. But whoever it is, for God's sake, let's avoid the two major parties here. I swear it sometimes seems like they were created to give people an excuse to stop thinking for themselves.
YMMV.
Oh I get your point, and I agree with most of it. I just had to balk at the Dylan thing. Am I biased towards him? Sure. But it all has to do with merits. I wasn't born until '73, so it's not like I'm looking back at a time I remember from my youth with nostalgia to come to my conclusion.
:)
:)
As for the Doors, I have to disagree with you that someone else would have just come in to do the same type of thing they did. Each innovative artist had a distinctive thing to offer. It's just because we've lived with their influence for a while that we take for granted how they changed music. We don't even notice the influence anymore. Take hip-hop music, for instance. When it first came out, you'd notice its influence in any new music you heard. It's influence in songs now is so ubiquitous (for both better and worse) that we can't even hear it anymore. Same with The Doors. If The Doors hadn't come out when they did, music probably would have been a lot more different now than you might think. It's hard to say if they'd be innovative if they came out now or if they'd be doing the same thing. Same goes for Dylan.
Bob Dylan is an acquired taste. The old stuff is often bare-bones guitar and of course everyone complains about his voice. But in my opinion, if someone gets over these things with time the rewards of enjoying both the lyricism AND the music are great. It kind of reminds me of appreciation of Guinness. (Sorry, I know it comes down to opinion. I just had to make the effort.)
So does Ray have a favorite football team?
Right now it seems like a huge majority of arcades break down into Gun Games or Fighting Games (of the Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Soul Edge variety). That and more than a few Driving Games.
Don't get me wrong, there's great new stuff in each category (the Time Crisis and Silent Scope stuff are great Gun Games). But I want innovation in another direction.
Any Strider fans out there? How about Smash TV? Now *those* were fun and innovative. I'm sick of people rehashing the same old formulas. I love playing a game that makes you feel like you're absorbed in a whole other world, and I just don't feel that they're making those anymore.
They ought to have a book or TV program or something to talk about what the best/most innovative arcades in history are. Anyone know of any?
"Good luck! You'll need it." -Smash TV
Is this some kind of a joke? Name one folk musician today that is anywhere close to Dylan at his height. Who do we have to look to today, Jewel? Both Dylan's lyrics and songwriting ability is without equal. When it comes to folk legacy, probably Woody Guthrie's is better, but that was a long time ago.
If Dylan came out today writing on the same topics he was then, then sure he wouldn't be too groundbreaking, but that's just because the topics are different. Regardless, the songs he wrote are still among the best that rock/folk music has to offer.
In case you haven't done so already, pick up a copy of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" to hear what real music sounds like.
-- But that's precisely why they're interesting to non-geeks (and especially interesting to geeks with social skills on a par with normal people; eg, the kind of geeks who "get" what it means to be a social being) - because you don't have fixed theories that X is 1 and pKa is .00479: you
have fuzzy things like voting patterns and perceptions and other characteristics that, if you can't see them, seem like religious poppycock ("why would people vote for a charismatic but unqualified candidate??"why, indeed...)--
It's not the "why do people vote the way they do" type of stuff I consider religious poppycock. It's the arguments/tactics that politicians use to get votes that I consider religious poppycock. Any idiot can tell you why people have voted the way they do. It's because the reason why they make their choice is often so poor that my social conscience tends to wilt. It's difficult for me to sympathize with a society that makes choices based on irrational motivations. (And then have the nerve to bitch after they find that their political decisions didn't pan out).
--Science may be more precise, but at the same time, it's a limitation that bores a great many people... it's too bad most geeks such as yourself think that that's the end, not the beginning.--
I agree that it's a beginning. But barely anyone even bothers to begin there. Actually, I think many people aren't interested in Science or Math because they don't like a subject which can prove that they are wrong. It's tough for some people to admit their mistakes. And because of that, we get politicians who can twist and double-talk until they make it seem like they are right without even knowing what they're doing. IMHO, people who are interested in science/math/computers would be a lot less likely to do so.
>> But that's precisely why they're interesting to non-geeks (and especially interesting to geeks with social skills on a par with normal people; eg, the kind of geeks who "get" what it means to be a social being) - because you don't have fixed theories that X is 1 and pKa is .00479: you
have fuzzy things like voting patterns and perceptions and other characteristics that, if you can't see them, seem like religious poppycock ("why would people vote for a charismatic but unqualified candidate??"why, indeed...)>Science may be more precise, but at the same time, it's a limitation that bores a great many people... it's too bad most geeks such as yourself think that that's the end, not the beginning.
I agree that it's a beginning. But barely anyone even bothers to begin there. Actually, I think many people aren't interested in Science or Math because they don't like a subject which can prove that they are wrong. It's tough for some people to admit their mistakes. And because of that, we get politicians that who can twist and double-talk until they make it seem like they are right. Try that in Math and see how far it gets you.
In my opinion, part of the reasons why us geeks have just a passing interest/understanding of political issues is because of the high level of BS that seems to go around in *ANY* level of discussion on the topic.
A lot of "knowledge" (possibly the majority of knowledge) we humans exchange has such a high level of dogma, misrepresentations, and pettiness included within it that you can never tell what to believe, no matter how much time one spends on the topic.
Now Mathematics, Physics, and so forth, are much more certain prospects. I don't give a shit what your personal opionion is on the Pythagorean Theorem. I know the proof, so any opinion someone offers otherwise I can ignore without a second thought.
Programming is the same sort of thing. Don't believe my algorithm will work? Well here's the program I created, notice how it works, now get the fuck out of my face.
It's disturbing the type of subjects which get the word "science" put after them. Political "Science"? Don't make me laugh. Social "Sciences"? Please! Give me Physics. Give me Math. Give me Chemistry. Give me Computers. They're not always correct. But they give you definite theories and experiments to test said theories. What politician can posssibly offer me the same?
Better solution. 1. Get "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" 2. Buy it. 3. Read it. 4. Throw "Atlas Shrugged" in the garbage. Someone should have told Ayn Rand that egoism is a shallow goal. Using it as the prime motivator leads to shallow work and results. Could have saved a lot of trees that way.
Here you go...
l
http://www.corepower.com/~relfaq/grav_speed.htm
"Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It's really great fun to go someplace where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have *lots of time*. Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard."
-Benjamin Hoff