Yeh, you really do need to spin it. After all if they said "Bringing the power of a ball of nuclear fire the size of a million Earths to you!" they might never have gotten the project off the ground.
Politico gives better national poltical coverage than my paper.
Michael Yon had some of the best field reporting on Iraq anywhere.
Analysis of security issues is amazing at Stratfor.
These cost less than a weekly subscription to my local major paper (Stratfor being the high dollar site).
Anyone who says there's no such thing as investigative journalism these days from the web is living under a rock. Anyone who thought there was once non-partisan investigative journalism took out a long term ARM on the rock.
Still, whenever I hear people lamenting the state of journalism and the loss of...whatever it is they think they're loosing...I wonder what they think should be done about it. A business that provided a valuable service is being replaced by other businesses that provide a similar service at a better percieved value. So what? Why is this an emergency?
It seems there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with the information being propogated. People seem to think something should be done about it. You'll have to fogive me if I'm less concerned about the failure of newspapers than I am about the idea that those dissatisfied with the content of current news reporting think something should be done about it.
But...the man on TV said he wanted to advance the broadnet-whatsit. Tech stuff is good? The government ought to be spending money on good stuff.
Alternatively, we could try to limit the ways we allow the government to take money from one person and give it to another instead of trying to make sure we get the most bang for someone else's buck.
What we really need to do to prevent this sort of government imposition on the flow of information in a way we don't like is to pass net neutrality legislation that allows the government to impose regulations on the flow of information in a way we do like.
As much as I love B5, if you're looking for a sciency hard science sci-fi, B5 isn't it. It was about characters and telling a heroic story.
Still, complaining that a story set in the future isn't more focused on extension of RL hard science is a lot like complaining that an Arthurian (in the case of B5 exactly like) story doesn't have more plague.
Even worse, you might not be able to tell what tactics worked and the constant scaling may yield a "false false" in terms of feedback concerning skill increase.
I prefer stages of difficulty; easy, normal, hard. Adjust granularity to taste.
It's not unusual for the extremes of a political ideology to turn on those who they thought were also fanatics. While I may disagree on the matter of Obama's press for a more socalist bent in The United States, I think it is fair to say that he is taking flack from both sides, though in different areas. You may be comforted that this will likely soon change. If national health care passes and POTUS decides to do something other than what the generals would like, it will pretty much be just the "neo-cons" that are mad at him.
I think you misunderstand me, and I imagine we agree on a number of points. I agree that the world needs people to stand between civilization and barbarism and that job requires force. Being willing and able to do battle is frequently the best way to discourage it or bring it to a swift end.
However, I'm fairly sure that General McCrystal wants combat troops and not "peacekeepers". I think he would much rather have people willing and able to meet and destroy the enemy. There are many other's amongst the NATO contingent that are willing to be present and assist in humanitarian and civil aspects that make up the idea of "peacekeeping". What he runs lacks is sufficient warmaking ability, particularly in terms of pervasive contact with the enemy. So, don't take me to mean that combat troops are bad. I owe a great deal to combat troops and consider their study of warfighting in the name of my ability to exercise my natural rights to be a high calling. At the same time, don't mistake that I feel these men and women will be called to a peaceful duty. I believe that it is necessary for them to volounteer for war, that I may know peace and enjoy my right. If they are victorious, the Afgan peoples will hopefully enjoy a peace of their own devising. Unfortunately, first comes war.
It may be that the award was given to narrow the President's options in regard to Afganistan. It is somewhat difficult to accept the Nobel Peace Prize and then send agree to your general's request for 40,000 aditional combat troops. Normally, when the prize is given to people who've not acomplished something, but are hoped to continue toward a goal, the committee has given the prize at pivitol moments to encourage a certain type of behavior. Arafat is a good example of this. The Nobel may have been awarded at a time when the POTUS is earnestly debating views on Afganastan to encourage a certain outcome in his deliberations.
1: Image recognition technology hasn't matured enough to reliably detect crimes based on video information. This program will likely be terminated, or transformed, once that technology matures sufficently. I'm not sure what they'll do with their compiled list of citizens who are good at observing and reporting on other citizens.
2: Recruitment of the citizenry to advance the aims of the state is a long time goal of such governments. It is yet another way that people can serve the state's desire to monitor and control people. The reasons a citizen would choose to join the surveilence society's monitoring and control programs are about as spooky as the potentials for state abuse.
Unlike RL, you can just move when you want a different polity and come into the world without being a citizen of a particular state. To accept membership in the clan is to to accept it's policy. Since membership in the orginizations is almost always volountary, there's no need for democracy as a means to manage the just consent of the governed. A clan may choose to govern however it likes, and can inflict little upon its members to which they do not consent (unlike RL, where the state can put you in jail). Finally, removing one's self from the clan is easy, and it is even possible to enjoy the benefits of the society (trade, community, protection, order) without the need for membership in the society. Simply put, democracy isn't needed.
I'd argue that it is apropriate to avoid purchasing products if the proceeds will be used for purposes to which you object. If you think buying Bioshock will give money to people whom you view as defaming a thing you hold to be valuable, it's probably not apropriate for you to buy the game. If you don't want to give money to the Roman Polanski defense fund, don't buy a ticket to his movies. If you think group of people X are vile or promote things you find vile, do not do things that give them money.
It can be a problem in purchasing entertainment that you may not know ahead of time the content. I don't think that's the case here, since a variety of adequate reviews and synopsis are available.
My two $.
BioShock is more about "bad things happen when people pursue power without restraint", than it is about "Rand bad". In BioShock, things seem to work remarkably well until biological enhancements are discovered and the same people that built a massive underwater city with a thriving high tech economy go berserk, kill each other, and ruin their city. It's about the discovery of a finite but (for our purposes) absolute power, and the destruction people can bring in the pursuit. If you still feel this is has anything to do with Rand's work, I advise you to replace "people" with "elves", "plasmids" with "rings", and "Rapture" with "Middle Earth". You'll get the same cautionary tale to beware the love of power (money, plasmids, donuts...).
I don't find the combination contrived, I just feel like they're less than professional. Military personnel with discipline problems. Military personnel stealing food. CO who volounteers to decapitate his detatchment and hasn't checked in with his superiors. Scientist who disobeys orders and risks the lives of the entire lot of them. There's probably also a traitor/spy. It seems like their best hope for turning the decaying ship into a stable home is a guy who wasn't able to turn his lingo/math/computer skills into a job. The fact that an emergency evacuation makes for an odd group of people doesn't surprised me at all. Seems pretty reasonable. The fact that the evacuation supplies prepared by the military didn't include guns-water-food in any reasonable quantity seems less reasonable.
I'm a huge B5 fan, but we just can't keep looking for it to come back. The show, I'd even argue the entire setting, was built to run its story, and it did that job very well. Given the quality of what's come after, I'd be very wary of a B5 feature. That said, don't let your love of B5 blind you to something good that might come along. Before B5, nearly every sci-fi out there lived in the shadow of StarTrek, and B5 suffered for that shadow. I think it's fair to compare SGU to SGA and SG-1. It's probably just as fair to compare it to a recent contemporary that likely will share some of the same character dynamics (There's a Gould on the ship.), BSG. However, just like not everything can/could be StarTrek, not everything can/could/should be B5.
I didn't like it. Seemed as if they rounded up the disfunctional people; from military personnel with discipline issues to an MMO geek who's living with his mom (who seems like a Wesley Crusher stand in for the show), and decided they'd be an exciting group of people to sail across the universe on a ship that's about as functional as its crew. I find the makeup of the "crew" absurd, and expect they'll spend the time SG-1 would have used to explore the galaxy, make friends, and fight bad guys to backstab each other and generally angst their way across the universe.
Say what you will, but with Jack, Sam, Teal'c and Daniel doing their job, I felt like the people of their universe could at least know they had quality people on the line. Even the Atlantis group seemed to be made of folks with extraoridinary levels of competency in their fields. These guys...well...these guys open sealed doors with flashing red lights on busted up spaceships.
Here's an excellent example of human beings not being able to sense long term trends because the pain here and now looms so much larger than the good over time. While the short term trend is that fuel, and therefor food, prices are increasing, the long term trend is decline. According to the USDA In 1930's people spent about a fourth of their total income on food. In 2004 it's less than a tenth. Also, that's the consumption of food in a time when American's have grown fatter. More food is being bought for a lower percentage of a person's income.
It looks like, in the US, the per-acre yeild for wheat production has increased, over the past century, at about the same rate of population. At the same time, fewer people are involved in agriculture, and the price of food is declining. The amount of land used for farming seems to be decreasing. From the looks of it, the production of food follows much the same model as the production of other common widely distributed goods. Over time, methods grow more efficient, the price drops, fewer people are needed to produce the good, and labor shifts from actual production to efficiency engineering and new product development.
Most climate change theories put the temperature shift at fractions of a degree every decade. But this is too fast to keep up with the information?
Most areas with extensive internet are already under 24X7 satellite surveillance that can measure temperature and precipitation. What are they expecting to get out of this?
If I'm sick, I search for "flu remedy". I will likely be sick tomorrow. It is possible I've spread germs and others will get sick. A new trend of searches for "flu remedy" is a decent indicator that people are concerned about the flu, and that is a decent indicator that they know sick people.
If I'm cold when I go out, I search for "winter coat". It may or may not be cold tomorrow, but probably will be since cold days group together. It is likely other people are also cold. But this isn't a predictive indicator. I'm cold because the temp already has dropped. The weatherman knows this, and I may have done my search because he said it was going to be cold tomorrow. The satellite knows this. Vast records are kept about how cold it was in Podunk, Kansas. You could predict that coat searches will go up because it was cold, but once people are searching for coats it's as a result of data you've already got from much more scientific measurements.
Even if you could find a method that was predictive, what indication is there that populations, even if good at predicting short term weather (I'm not convinced), are competent in any way at predicting long term climate changes? Are they really arguing that the people, many of whom have a disturbing habit of living on flood plains, barrier islands and below sea level, are going to produce accurate data about future environmental shifts?
It seems far more likely that this is a chance for someone to do research using a cool new toy. Our climate models current are pretty universal in their failure to predict the future, and that's with tons of solid data. This seems like a buzzword filled hole designed to sound urgent and cutting edge. An unproven model using an unproven data collection method can be used to justify any conclusion that will keep this project funded as long as it sounds cool enough to the people footing the bill.
It's pretty bad they want to use the existing diversity laws to silence evolutionists. It's a blatant violation of any number of principles relating to the free exchange of ideas.
At least they where able to make sure none of the creationists could speak.
"You only need to put weapons in space if you want to hold the whole world hostage."
I disagree with this. Systems designed to strike missles in their assent stage are a good example of a fairly defensive weapon that makes a lot of sense in space. Is it a "dual use" technology? Perhaps, but I can see solid reasons to place weapons for defending satellites and destroying IRBMs in orbit instead of relying on ground lauched assets that are geographically restricted. The fact that the high ground is very good to attack from does not undo the fact that it is also good for defense.
Slashdot Mirror
The, as you put it, "useful idiots" are getting what they deserve.
Problem is, everyone else is also getting what the "useful idiots" deserve.
Yeh, you really do need to spin it. After all if they said "Bringing the power of a ball of nuclear fire the size of a million Earths to you!" they might never have gotten the project off the ground.
Politico gives better national poltical coverage than my paper.
Michael Yon had some of the best field reporting on Iraq anywhere.
Analysis of security issues is amazing at Stratfor.
These cost less than a weekly subscription to my local major paper (Stratfor being the high dollar site).
Anyone who says there's no such thing as investigative journalism these days from the web is living under a rock. Anyone who thought there was once non-partisan investigative journalism took out a long term ARM on the rock.
Still, whenever I hear people lamenting the state of journalism and the loss of...whatever it is they think they're loosing...I wonder what they think should be done about it. A business that provided a valuable service is being replaced by other businesses that provide a similar service at a better percieved value. So what? Why is this an emergency?
It seems there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with the information being propogated. People seem to think something should be done about it. You'll have to fogive me if I'm less concerned about the failure of newspapers than I am about the idea that those dissatisfied with the content of current news reporting think something should be done about it.
I'd agree with this. Processors only have to be fast enough that human beings don't notice the time it takes for the processor to do its work.
But...the man on TV said he wanted to advance the broadnet-whatsit. Tech stuff is good? The government ought to be spending money on good stuff. Alternatively, we could try to limit the ways we allow the government to take money from one person and give it to another instead of trying to make sure we get the most bang for someone else's buck.
What we really need to do to prevent this sort of government imposition on the flow of information in a way we don't like is to pass net neutrality legislation that allows the government to impose regulations on the flow of information in a way we do like.
Your suggestion that we participate in your corrupt "Trademark" system is an offense to our revolutionary ideals.
As much as I love B5, if you're looking for a sciency hard science sci-fi, B5 isn't it. It was about characters and telling a heroic story.
Still, complaining that a story set in the future isn't more focused on extension of RL hard science is a lot like complaining that an Arthurian (in the case of B5 exactly like) story doesn't have more plague.
Even worse, you might not be able to tell what tactics worked and the constant scaling may yield a "false false" in terms of feedback concerning skill increase. I prefer stages of difficulty; easy, normal, hard. Adjust granularity to taste.
Please remove your identity politics from my software.
It's not unusual for the extremes of a political ideology to turn on those who they thought were also fanatics. While I may disagree on the matter of Obama's press for a more socalist bent in The United States, I think it is fair to say that he is taking flack from both sides, though in different areas. You may be comforted that this will likely soon change. If national health care passes and POTUS decides to do something other than what the generals would like, it will pretty much be just the "neo-cons" that are mad at him.
I think you misunderstand me, and I imagine we agree on a number of points. I agree that the world needs people to stand between civilization and barbarism and that job requires force. Being willing and able to do battle is frequently the best way to discourage it or bring it to a swift end.
However, I'm fairly sure that General McCrystal wants combat troops and not "peacekeepers". I think he would much rather have people willing and able to meet and destroy the enemy. There are many other's amongst the NATO contingent that are willing to be present and assist in humanitarian and civil aspects that make up the idea of "peacekeeping". What he runs lacks is sufficient warmaking ability, particularly in terms of pervasive contact with the enemy.
So, don't take me to mean that combat troops are bad. I owe a great deal to combat troops and consider their study of warfighting in the name of my ability to exercise my natural rights to be a high calling. At the same time, don't mistake that I feel these men and women will be called to a peaceful duty. I believe that it is necessary for them to volounteer for war, that I may know peace and enjoy my right. If they are victorious, the Afgan peoples will hopefully enjoy a peace of their own devising. Unfortunately, first comes war.
It may be that the award was given to narrow the President's options in regard to Afganistan. It is somewhat difficult to accept the Nobel Peace Prize and then send agree to your general's request for 40,000 aditional combat troops. Normally, when the prize is given to people who've not acomplished something, but are hoped to continue toward a goal, the committee has given the prize at pivitol moments to encourage a certain type of behavior. Arafat is a good example of this. The Nobel may have been awarded at a time when the POTUS is earnestly debating views on Afganastan to encourage a certain outcome in his deliberations.
1: Image recognition technology hasn't matured enough to reliably detect crimes based on video information. This program will likely be terminated, or transformed, once that technology matures sufficently. I'm not sure what they'll do with their compiled list of citizens who are good at observing and reporting on other citizens. 2: Recruitment of the citizenry to advance the aims of the state is a long time goal of such governments. It is yet another way that people can serve the state's desire to monitor and control people. The reasons a citizen would choose to join the surveilence society's monitoring and control programs are about as spooky as the potentials for state abuse.
Unlike RL, you can just move when you want a different polity and come into the world without being a citizen of a particular state. To accept membership in the clan is to to accept it's policy. Since membership in the orginizations is almost always volountary, there's no need for democracy as a means to manage the just consent of the governed. A clan may choose to govern however it likes, and can inflict little upon its members to which they do not consent (unlike RL, where the state can put you in jail). Finally, removing one's self from the clan is easy, and it is even possible to enjoy the benefits of the society (trade, community, protection, order) without the need for membership in the society. Simply put, democracy isn't needed.
I'd argue that it is apropriate to avoid purchasing products if the proceeds will be used for purposes to which you object. If you think buying Bioshock will give money to people whom you view as defaming a thing you hold to be valuable, it's probably not apropriate for you to buy the game. If you don't want to give money to the Roman Polanski defense fund, don't buy a ticket to his movies. If you think group of people X are vile or promote things you find vile, do not do things that give them money.
It can be a problem in purchasing entertainment that you may not know ahead of time the content. I don't think that's the case here, since a variety of adequate reviews and synopsis are available.
My two $.
BioShock is more about "bad things happen when people pursue power without restraint", than it is about "Rand bad".
In BioShock, things seem to work remarkably well until biological enhancements are discovered and the same people that built a massive underwater city with a thriving high tech economy go berserk, kill each other, and ruin their city. It's about the discovery of a finite but (for our purposes) absolute power, and the destruction people can bring in the pursuit.
If you still feel this is has anything to do with Rand's work, I advise you to replace "people" with "elves", "plasmids" with "rings", and "Rapture" with "Middle Earth". You'll get the same cautionary tale to beware the love of power (money, plasmids, donuts...).
I don't find the combination contrived, I just feel like they're less than professional. Military personnel with discipline problems. Military personnel stealing food. CO who volounteers to decapitate his detatchment and hasn't checked in with his superiors. Scientist who disobeys orders and risks the lives of the entire lot of them. There's probably also a traitor/spy. It seems like their best hope for turning the decaying ship into a stable home is a guy who wasn't able to turn his lingo/math/computer skills into a job. The fact that an emergency evacuation makes for an odd group of people doesn't surprised me at all. Seems pretty reasonable. The fact that the evacuation supplies prepared by the military didn't include guns-water-food in any reasonable quantity seems less reasonable.
They'll even have a Gould (spies revealed the Icarus base location to the Gould) to stand in for skinjobs.
I'm a huge B5 fan, but we just can't keep looking for it to come back. The show, I'd even argue the entire setting, was built to run its story, and it did that job very well. Given the quality of what's come after, I'd be very wary of a B5 feature. That said, don't let your love of B5 blind you to something good that might come along. Before B5, nearly every sci-fi out there lived in the shadow of StarTrek, and B5 suffered for that shadow. I think it's fair to compare SGU to SGA and SG-1. It's probably just as fair to compare it to a recent contemporary that likely will share some of the same character dynamics (There's a Gould on the ship.), BSG. However, just like not everything can/could be StarTrek, not everything can/could/should be B5.
I didn't like it. Seemed as if they rounded up the disfunctional people; from military personnel with discipline issues to an MMO geek who's living with his mom (who seems like a Wesley Crusher stand in for the show), and decided they'd be an exciting group of people to sail across the universe on a ship that's about as functional as its crew. I find the makeup of the "crew" absurd, and expect they'll spend the time SG-1 would have used to explore the galaxy, make friends, and fight bad guys to backstab each other and generally angst their way across the universe. Say what you will, but with Jack, Sam, Teal'c and Daniel doing their job, I felt like the people of their universe could at least know they had quality people on the line. Even the Atlantis group seemed to be made of folks with extraoridinary levels of competency in their fields. These guys...well...these guys open sealed doors with flashing red lights on busted up spaceships.
Here's an excellent example of human beings not being able to sense long term trends because the pain here and now looms so much larger than the good over time. While the short term trend is that fuel, and therefor food, prices are increasing, the long term trend is decline. According to the USDA In 1930's people spent about a fourth of their total income on food. In 2004 it's less than a tenth. Also, that's the consumption of food in a time when American's have grown fatter. More food is being bought for a lower percentage of a person's income.
It looks like, in the US, the per-acre yeild for wheat production has increased, over the past century, at about the same rate of population. At the same time, fewer people are involved in agriculture, and the price of food is declining. The amount of land used for farming seems to be decreasing. From the looks of it, the production of food follows much the same model as the production of other common widely distributed goods. Over time, methods grow more efficient, the price drops, fewer people are needed to produce the good, and labor shifts from actual production to efficiency engineering and new product development.
Most climate change theories put the temperature shift at fractions of a degree every decade. But this is too fast to keep up with the information? Most areas with extensive internet are already under 24X7 satellite surveillance that can measure temperature and precipitation. What are they expecting to get out of this? If I'm sick, I search for "flu remedy". I will likely be sick tomorrow. It is possible I've spread germs and others will get sick. A new trend of searches for "flu remedy" is a decent indicator that people are concerned about the flu, and that is a decent indicator that they know sick people. If I'm cold when I go out, I search for "winter coat". It may or may not be cold tomorrow, but probably will be since cold days group together. It is likely other people are also cold. But this isn't a predictive indicator. I'm cold because the temp already has dropped. The weatherman knows this, and I may have done my search because he said it was going to be cold tomorrow. The satellite knows this. Vast records are kept about how cold it was in Podunk, Kansas. You could predict that coat searches will go up because it was cold, but once people are searching for coats it's as a result of data you've already got from much more scientific measurements. Even if you could find a method that was predictive, what indication is there that populations, even if good at predicting short term weather (I'm not convinced), are competent in any way at predicting long term climate changes? Are they really arguing that the people, many of whom have a disturbing habit of living on flood plains, barrier islands and below sea level, are going to produce accurate data about future environmental shifts? It seems far more likely that this is a chance for someone to do research using a cool new toy. Our climate models current are pretty universal in their failure to predict the future, and that's with tons of solid data. This seems like a buzzword filled hole designed to sound urgent and cutting edge. An unproven model using an unproven data collection method can be used to justify any conclusion that will keep this project funded as long as it sounds cool enough to the people footing the bill.
It's pretty bad they want to use the existing diversity laws to silence evolutionists. It's a blatant violation of any number of principles relating to the free exchange of ideas. At least they where able to make sure none of the creationists could speak.
"You only need to put weapons in space if you want to hold the whole world hostage." I disagree with this. Systems designed to strike missles in their assent stage are a good example of a fairly defensive weapon that makes a lot of sense in space. Is it a "dual use" technology? Perhaps, but I can see solid reasons to place weapons for defending satellites and destroying IRBMs in orbit instead of relying on ground lauched assets that are geographically restricted. The fact that the high ground is very good to attack from does not undo the fact that it is also good for defense.