First, without a chinese BM capable of penetrating US airspace (yet), there'd be a problem with step 1. Next, it would be a rash assumption to simply remove half the forces.
Yes, there would be serious crippling of communications, and high-tech reliant weapons, systems, early warning, perhaps air defenses. But that by no means eliminates any forces. A grunt with an M16 is still a grunt with an M16. Most grunts don't even carry a radio. GPS, sure, but communication at the platoon level would still go on as normal.
I'm guessing stage 2 of this war would be something like, the US responds with a massive wave of high-altitude bombers, nuclear and non. Stage 3, Oog, the former communist uses flint and stone to start a fire in his cave to cook the wild deer he just killed with a flint spear. ..
Since the creation of corporations, throughout human history, there has been several attempts at "reigning-in" these "little cancerous individuals". All of them have failed, in most cases, resulting in a backlash that leaves the whole in a worse state than before - often accompanied by a huge media-carried blitz of propaganda blaming regulation and socialism for the turmoil and bad times. The lunatic fringe wackos that espouse the opposite viewpoint will be perceived as lunatic fringe wackos (aka little cancerous individuals) until all resistance to the "corporate meme" has been destroyed.
If you look at it in a darwinian sense, and at how well positioned monopolies/oligopolies, and multinationals are, you will quickly realize that there is absolutely no chance that the stronger animal will survive, and destroy the weaker animal. It will not be a pretty picture - and will ultimately result in the destruction of humanity, and probably all life on the planet. I'm guessing we have less than 100 years left.
reminds me of that futurama episode where they go to the amusement park, like the new york of 2000, where groups of cowboys, who talk like surfers, ride hover-scooters, and go mammoth hunting with spears. . . hilarious.
This is actually a great strategy, as the divorcee with kids is often getting Child Support payments in large excess of what it actually costs to raise the kids, so you get to be a dad, without the expense.
I have a freind who's ex and two kids, and drunk-ass unemployed boyfreind are LIVING off his child support as sole income. Neither work, and she doesn't pay income tax on the support.
However, he may be having an "accident" soon. That's MY prediction for the new year. . .
;)
I've always thought of that "attitude" that we're better than our ancestors, and that our future generations will be better than us, was naive. Very naive.
We're no better off than we were 2000 years ago. Read the Bible, and look at how the people supposedly behaved in that era - not much better or worse than we behave now, new scientific knowledge gained notwithstanding.
There's an explanation for this phenomenon. Because of the genetic disadvantages, we've been wired to reject incest.
When you're "best freinds" with a chick, they're basically perceiving you as their brother, so they're wired against being "that way" with you, because that would be incest. It's hard to distinguish between a good close friend, and a brother - biologically, subconsciously.
If such a relationship DOES turn "that way", then it's likely that their genetic programming against incest is out of whack. So worry about those.:)
2003 - US emerges from economic depression as Alaskan oil reserves begin producing large amounts of cheap oil. US Space program halted as too costly. New generation of high altitude bombers, smart cruise missiles, ICBM's, and ABM systems are proposed and approved by congress. With this new system in place, the US will be able to send a swarm of hypersonic radar-evading cruise missiles carrying a variety of payloads to any place on the globe within 30 minutes. No American or allied target can be touched by any enemy ballistic missile.
2004 - Bush is elected for second term - crime rate has dropped to near zero, US prison population is 50 million (mostly women seeking abortions). Microsoft, however, is not split, business as usual, as the Bush-appointees to the US supreme court throw out the DOJ case. New York city has 20 days above 110 degrees farenheit this summer. The last bit of ocean coral reef is bleached dead. Portland Oregon is evacuated as nuclear waste material from Hanford poisons the Columbia river.
2008 - US throws out two-term presidential limit, as Bush is overwhelmingly re-elected as a write-in candidate. (US election laws were changed to allow internet-only voting, using Microsoft software running only on Windows computers). Linux is outlawed as a "Hacker-tool". US prison population is 100 million. Internet switches to a Microsoft-proprietary protocol, TCPIP is outlawed. Linux outlaws still communicate via dial-up BBSes. The last rogue unregulated wireless "bbs" networks were stamped out by the FCC. No new TV programs or movies have been released since 2005, all entertainment content is pay-per-use, via the internet. Microsoft now owns most major media companies, including TimeWarner/AOL. AOL subsribers were all migrated to MSN. US Postal service has assigned each American an email address: john.q.public@xxx-xx-xxxx.hotmail.com (where xxx-xx-xxxx is your social security number).
Global ocean levels have risen 20 feet as polar icecaps melt.
New military weapons become available. ABM system turns out to be an expensive scam, as the US congress scrambles to get defense contractors to fix it.
2010 - US, Australia, and EU combine with Russia as a northern superpower. Microsoft's orbital mind-control lasers keep OPEC nations in line after the great depression of 2002 caused by rising energy costs. Alaskan oil keeps flowing. North Pacific fishing is almost completely halted after a huge oil spill spreads a slick from Tokyo to Seattle. The last American national observatory is closed as no stars are currently visible. 1 billion die of starvation. (mostly 3rd world countries) - US destroys 70 billion tons of grain as part of a price support program.
20 million US prison inmates are executed. Mostly former Linux "hacktivists". Except in remote locations of Antarctica, water does not exist in a solid state anywhere on the surface of earth. Most people are living in refugee camps as their coastal cities are flooded.
2014 - US sends troops to China to supress a revolution that started when the Chinese govt. was unable to feed large segments of the rural population. A nuclear/biowar exchange ensues. 1 billion are killed.
2020 - 3 billion people (mostly 3rd world nations and Russians and Chinese, but including 10 million Americans and Europeans of skin or lung cancer) die of starvation, disease, or natural disasters as the climate spins out of control. Anchorage Alaska has 10 days above 110 degrees this summer. Though there's nobody living there as an uncapped oil well continues to spew into the pacific. Earth's last tree dies. It was cut down and made into a desk for George Bush.
2030 - George Bush dies during an expolsion of a chemical plant in New Jersey. Taking 20 million residents of the East Coast with him, as a cloud of deadly chemicals rains down into the atlantic ocean. Earth's remaining human population dwindles to 100 million - as the few living humans have an almost zero fertility rate. Almost 20 million are inmates who escaped from a gigantic prison facility in the New Mexico desert. It is the largest concentration of humans left on the planet. Unfortunately, most are male, and the percentage of homosexuality is very high (even among women) because these people were originally jailed for either being homosexual, or being a homosexual sympathyser.
2040 - Earth's final remaining human dies of skin cancer. She had been living on canned beans for 5 years, having found a huge stockpile at a warehouse in Albequerquie.
2590 - Earth's climate has not returned to normal, it can no longer support multi-celled organisms. Most of the pollution and oil has settled, and ocean algae return, and begin to replenish the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere, which, unfortunately, causes a chemical change in the atmosphere, by 2750, the Earth changes from a near hothouse condition, to a global ice age, that locks the surface under miles of ice for 100,000 years. In one spot in New Mexico, a glacier scrubs off the covering of a nuclear waste facility contaning waste from the US, Europe, and Russia. When the glaciers melt, the world's oceans are poisoned with deadly radioactive materials, killing off all algae. The Earth falls back into another ice age, this time, without any life to alter conditions, the ice age lasts 2 million years. A giant meteor hits Earth, causing a crater the size of Texas, puncturing the Earth's crust, and forming a huge cauldron of magma, melting the ice caps. In a small pool of warm water next to the crater, organic molecules form the basic building blocks to begin life. Once the crater cools, ice forms over it, and until the sun expands into a red giant 3 million years later, the ice remains, and Earth remains a dead planet.
5 Million years from now - The Earth is engulfed in solar plasma. George Bush's desk burns.
Many, many many, many times in the past ten years, I've been "aware" of these showers. And many many many many many times, I've been disappointed at poor predictions of peaks, or bad weather, etc.
I've done a lot of standing around outside at night with very little reward. The leonids last year was a huge disappointment, because they didn't peak over my part of the world. The previous year, it was cloudy.
Can this radio reception method be used to detect a peak in the shower before I climb out of my nice warm bed, get dressed and go outside and stand for 15 minutes waiting for my eyes to adjust, and listen to the sound of my ass freezing, falling off and shattering on the ground?
In my opinion, probably the mean person is probably exposed to and seeks a higher quality of entertainment in the present era than in ancient times (Circus Maximus anyone?).
And just because some bookseller is hyping titles that are currently in the market's mind, readily sellable, currently in publication, DOES NOT MEAN FUCKING SQUAT. What Amazon says about literature means no more than a yellow and red suited clown expounding the virtues of sliced potatoes delicately cooked in a vat of boiling vegetable oil.
It's marketing. Grow up. The more you take them seriously, the more you encourage them.
" but as you learn critical business skills such as how to interoperate with other people without offending"
or other critical business skills like supressing your conscience or sense of ethics. Had to be said. Many people don't WANT to "play the corporate game", because it's dirty. Dirtier than scat.
I remember being sent to a psychologist to see why I was such an underachiever in school. Around age 9 or 10 or so.
They didn't figure it out, but at least the ritalin perscription (which was definately not in vogue in those years, as it has been in recent years) wasn't pushed. No telling what I would be like now.
Likes to web surf a little bit.
Likes computers, technology, scifi,
(other/. topics, they may or may not like, but I'm pretty sure we're all pretty much on those three).
Likes commenting to strangers about those three (and other topics)
Probably a little opinionated. Probably a little insecure in those opinions; (call it "open-minded" thus enjoys reading others opinions.
Likes learning new things from people who know (or at least can convince others that they know).
Probably a bit bored.
Every other characteristic is probably up for grabs.
Over the years, I've conversed with really stupid people, or people who know a lot about microchip design, enough to do it for a living, and for a hobby, they comment intelligently on the latest cosmological data and theories. There are people who are MCSE's, who dig Windoz and believe in a single-vendor solution and dominance (because that's what "the market" dictates) - and there are others who are violently pro open source, and write their own OSes. Lots of people who are web designers. There are very few true democrats OR republicans, just people who are afraid of the other side, and die-hard libertarians, followers of Ayn Rand, and die-hard socialists. Some of us believe we should "melt the guns", and others believe that "an armed society is a polite society". There are a lot of very spiritual people, lots of pagans, even a few satanists, even a few Christians, and then there are a number of solid athiests. And then there are a lot of agnostics. Fans of just about every kind of music imaginable (except Pop - er, hey that's funny, isn't it?:)
Lots of us are unathletic, or don't carry an interest in athletics. Some of us work out 20 hours a week, play football, lots of us are into martial arts.
Some of us were picked on as children for being different, others were embraced and cherished for those differences. Others were just not perceived as being so different.
Many of us are caffeine addicts. Some of us drink, or even consider beer to be a hobby, or an intellectual pursuit.
I'm sure we've all visited a porn site or two.
We all think Cowboy Neal is a big dick.
Yes it's a big wide wired world out there. We're from all over. Different generations, different upbringings, different economic status. Some of us live behind filters, but we're all net-connected, we all have voices that want to be heard, and ears that want to listen, minds that want to learn, and we all dream of a better tomorrow - yet fear the coming dark times. We're from all over. Different generations, different upbringings, different economic status.
70 years from now, when my grandson is a History teacher, I believe that the Internet will be described in his class in exactly these terms:
". . . an Internet user of the year 2000 posted a message, which summed up very concisely what most Internet users of the time were probably feeling:
Personally, I'm sick and tired of the bullshit that 'businessmen' have brought to the internet. I've never seen such greed, selfishness and complete lack of awareness. 95% of them have the ethics of a snake-oil salesman. --
Drop into town, screw everyone over, use up all the resources to push your product, and leave witht he moola, onto the next town/resource that you can extort. "
Just saw THX1138 the other day, first time in oh, about 15 years, and that scene towards the end, when THX1138 is escaping in the jet car, and it's screaming down the highway/tunnel, and two robo-cops on motorbikes are chasing him - it was VERY x-wing-tie-fighter-death-star-trench-scene-ish. Right down to the sound effects, cuts between the speeding vehicles, cockpit closeups, beeping radar screens showing the bogies getting closer. . .
Otherwise, a rather thoughtful, but boring movie, I strongly recommend any Star Wars fan go rent this movie and check out that scene. It's a riot how similar it is to the death-star scene (that's been ripped off ten thousand times in ten thousand other sci fi movies since then).
I've also found that, quite often, if you have a superficial friend, and you open up to them, quite often, you'll never hear from them again after that.
I am married, have a son and daughter, and my wife is sort of my best friend by default, as in, we moved out of state, so we don't have our old freindships any more, they've all married, got lives, etc.
She knows of these difficulties, and she suffers from some of the same, and I don't know if it's my fault, or her fault, or if we both have the same problem. At least we have eachother, but her interests are changing, and she's no longer so interested in gaming, or computers (never really was a computer person) -
I haven't "warned" my son, per se. He does seem to have a problem with athletics, but he doesn't seem to have trouble making friends. He's 7. He's very popular at school, especially with the girls;). And thank God, he's pretty good at math, unlike both of his parents. I feel I'll basically be there to warn him if things go bad, not to use it as an excuse to be angry at people. I guess sports isn't that important at this age, or maybe it's different now - the focus where I grew up in Illinois was on basketball and baseball and football. Now, he's growing up in California, and basketball is there, but people aren't fanatical about it, and the kids all like the extreme sports, skateboarding, surfing, stunt-bikes, and he IS much better at basketball this year than last year - so maybe there's hope for him.
His favorite TV show (after Pokemon - yay! a budding anime fan!) is Bill Nye, the Science Guy. So I know he's not gonna be some meathead jock. (his little sister loves Sailor Moon - so Anime does appear to be a genetic trait:)
Slashdot Mirror
First, without a chinese BM capable of penetrating US airspace (yet), there'd be a problem with step 1. Next, it would be a rash assumption to simply remove half the forces.
.
Yes, there would be serious crippling of communications, and high-tech reliant weapons, systems, early warning, perhaps air defenses. But that by no means eliminates any forces. A grunt with an M16 is still a grunt with an M16. Most grunts don't even carry a radio. GPS, sure, but communication at the platoon level would still go on as normal.
I'm guessing stage 2 of this war would be something like, the US responds with a massive wave of high-altitude bombers, nuclear and non. Stage 3, Oog, the former communist uses flint and stone to start a fire in his cave to cook the wild deer he just killed with a flint spear. .
No, the hospital ban on cell phones is to keep people from coming into hospitals with cell phones and acting more important than the doctors.
Since the creation of corporations, throughout human history, there has been several attempts at "reigning-in" these "little cancerous individuals". All of them have failed, in most cases, resulting in a backlash that leaves the whole in a worse state than before - often accompanied by a huge media-carried blitz of propaganda blaming regulation and socialism for the turmoil and bad times. The lunatic fringe wackos that espouse the opposite viewpoint will be perceived as lunatic fringe wackos (aka little cancerous individuals) until all resistance to the "corporate meme" has been destroyed.
If you look at it in a darwinian sense, and at how well positioned monopolies/oligopolies, and multinationals are, you will quickly realize that there is absolutely no chance that the stronger animal will survive, and destroy the weaker animal. It will not be a pretty picture - and will ultimately result in the destruction of humanity, and probably all life on the planet. I'm guessing we have less than 100 years left.
fuck that song, learn to spell!
reminds me of that futurama episode where they go to the amusement park, like the new york of 2000, where groups of cowboys, who talk like surfers, ride hover-scooters, and go mammoth hunting with spears. . . hilarious.
whachya do is tell her:
"well, if you can't find any good guys out there, I know of a bad guy in need of a little reform who might work out for you."
This is actually a great strategy, as the divorcee with kids is often getting Child Support payments in large excess of what it actually costs to raise the kids, so you get to be a dad, without the expense.
I have a freind who's ex and two kids, and drunk-ass unemployed boyfreind are LIVING off his child support as sole income. Neither work, and she doesn't pay income tax on the support.
However, he may be having an "accident" soon. That's MY prediction for the new year. . .
;)
I've always thought of that "attitude" that we're better than our ancestors, and that our future generations will be better than us, was naive. Very naive.
We're no better off than we were 2000 years ago. Read the Bible, and look at how the people supposedly behaved in that era - not much better or worse than we behave now, new scientific knowledge gained notwithstanding.
There's an explanation for this phenomenon. Because of the genetic disadvantages, we've been wired to reject incest.
:)
When you're "best freinds" with a chick, they're basically perceiving you as their brother, so they're wired against being "that way" with you, because that would be incest. It's hard to distinguish between a good close friend, and a brother - biologically, subconsciously.
If such a relationship DOES turn "that way", then it's likely that their genetic programming against incest is out of whack. So worry about those.
2003 - US emerges from economic depression as Alaskan oil reserves begin producing large amounts of cheap oil. US Space program halted as too costly. New generation of high altitude bombers, smart cruise missiles, ICBM's, and ABM systems are proposed and approved by congress. With this new system in place, the US will be able to send a swarm of hypersonic radar-evading cruise missiles carrying a variety of payloads to any place on the globe within 30 minutes. No American or allied target can be touched by any enemy ballistic missile.
2004 - Bush is elected for second term - crime rate has dropped to near zero, US prison population is 50 million (mostly women seeking abortions). Microsoft, however, is not split, business as usual, as the Bush-appointees to the US supreme court throw out the DOJ case. New York city has 20 days above 110 degrees farenheit this summer. The last bit of ocean coral reef is bleached dead. Portland Oregon is evacuated as nuclear waste material from Hanford poisons the Columbia river.
2008 - US throws out two-term presidential limit, as Bush is overwhelmingly re-elected as a write-in candidate. (US election laws were changed to allow internet-only voting, using Microsoft software running only on Windows computers). Linux is outlawed as a "Hacker-tool". US prison population is 100 million. Internet switches to a Microsoft-proprietary protocol, TCPIP is outlawed. Linux outlaws still communicate via dial-up BBSes. The last rogue unregulated wireless "bbs" networks were stamped out by the FCC. No new TV programs or movies have been released since 2005, all entertainment content is pay-per-use, via the internet. Microsoft now owns most major media companies, including TimeWarner/AOL. AOL subsribers were all migrated to MSN. US Postal service has assigned each American an email address: john.q.public@xxx-xx-xxxx.hotmail.com (where xxx-xx-xxxx is your social security number).
Global ocean levels have risen 20 feet as polar icecaps melt.
New military weapons become available. ABM system turns out to be an expensive scam, as the US congress scrambles to get defense contractors to fix it.
2010 - US, Australia, and EU combine with Russia as a northern superpower. Microsoft's orbital mind-control lasers keep OPEC nations in line after the great depression of 2002 caused by rising energy costs. Alaskan oil keeps flowing. North Pacific fishing is almost completely halted after a huge oil spill spreads a slick from Tokyo to Seattle. The last American national observatory is closed as no stars are currently visible. 1 billion die of starvation. (mostly 3rd world countries) - US destroys 70 billion tons of grain as part of a price support program.
20 million US prison inmates are executed. Mostly former Linux "hacktivists". Except in remote locations of Antarctica, water does not exist in a solid state anywhere on the surface of earth. Most people are living in refugee camps as their coastal cities are flooded.
2014 - US sends troops to China to supress a revolution that started when the Chinese govt. was unable to feed large segments of the rural population. A nuclear/biowar exchange ensues. 1 billion are killed.
2020 - 3 billion people (mostly 3rd world nations and Russians and Chinese, but including 10 million Americans and Europeans of skin or lung cancer) die of starvation, disease, or natural disasters as the climate spins out of control. Anchorage Alaska has 10 days above 110 degrees this summer. Though there's nobody living there as an uncapped oil well continues to spew into the pacific. Earth's last tree dies. It was cut down and made into a desk for George Bush.
2030 - George Bush dies during an expolsion of a chemical plant in New Jersey. Taking 20 million residents of the East Coast with him, as a cloud of deadly chemicals rains down into the atlantic ocean. Earth's remaining human population dwindles to 100 million - as the few living humans have an almost zero fertility rate. Almost 20 million are inmates who escaped from a gigantic prison facility in the New Mexico desert. It is the largest concentration of humans left on the planet. Unfortunately, most are male, and the percentage of homosexuality is very high (even among women) because these people were originally jailed for either being homosexual, or being a homosexual sympathyser.
2040 - Earth's final remaining human dies of skin cancer. She had been living on canned beans for 5 years, having found a huge stockpile at a warehouse in Albequerquie.
2590 - Earth's climate has not returned to normal, it can no longer support multi-celled organisms. Most of the pollution and oil has settled, and ocean algae return, and begin to replenish the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere, which, unfortunately, causes a chemical change in the atmosphere, by 2750, the Earth changes from a near hothouse condition, to a global ice age, that locks the surface under miles of ice for 100,000 years. In one spot in New Mexico, a glacier scrubs off the covering of a nuclear waste facility contaning waste from the US, Europe, and Russia. When the glaciers melt, the world's oceans are poisoned with deadly radioactive materials, killing off all algae. The Earth falls back into another ice age, this time, without any life to alter conditions, the ice age lasts 2 million years. A giant meteor hits Earth, causing a crater the size of Texas, puncturing the Earth's crust, and forming a huge cauldron of magma, melting the ice caps. In a small pool of warm water next to the crater, organic molecules form the basic building blocks to begin life. Once the crater cools, ice forms over it, and until the sun expands into a red giant 3 million years later, the ice remains, and Earth remains a dead planet.
5 Million years from now - The Earth is engulfed in solar plasma. George Bush's desk burns.
at least it wasn't "NASA's 3.2 billion dollar orbiting plutonium environmental radiation hazard Cassini"
Many, many many, many times in the past ten years, I've been "aware" of these showers. And many many many many many times, I've been disappointed at poor predictions of peaks, or bad weather, etc.
I've done a lot of standing around outside at night with very little reward. The leonids last year was a huge disappointment, because they didn't peak over my part of the world. The previous year, it was cloudy.
Can this radio reception method be used to detect a peak in the shower before I climb out of my nice warm bed, get dressed and go outside and stand for 15 minutes waiting for my eyes to adjust, and listen to the sound of my ass freezing, falling off and shattering on the ground?
english is fancy? I had no idea.
What rollmaster needed, in my opinion, was a computer program to keep track of all the accounting, tables, and endless rolling and modifiers.
If you had a nice 486 sitting in the corner crunching numbers, you could have more time to spend actually role playing (not roll playing).
Culture is *not* being lowbrowed in any way.
In my opinion, probably the mean person is probably exposed to and seeks a higher quality of entertainment in the present era than in ancient times (Circus Maximus anyone?).
And just because some bookseller is hyping titles that are currently in the market's mind, readily sellable, currently in publication, DOES NOT MEAN FUCKING SQUAT. What Amazon says about literature means no more than a yellow and red suited clown expounding the virtues of sliced potatoes delicately cooked in a vat of boiling vegetable oil.
It's marketing. Grow up. The more you take them seriously, the more you encourage them.
What about Dianetics? Surely one of the great bestsellers of all time!
comment:
" but as you learn critical business skills such as how to interoperate with other people without offending"
or other critical business skills like supressing your conscience or sense of ethics. Had to be said. Many people don't WANT to "play the corporate game", because it's dirty. Dirtier than scat.
I remember being sent to a psychologist to see why I was such an underachiever in school. Around age 9 or 10 or so.
They didn't figure it out, but at least the ritalin perscription (which was definately not in vogue in those years, as it has been in recent years) wasn't pushed. No telling what I would be like now.
My idea of the average /. user, a snapshot:
/. topics, they may or may not like, but I'm pretty sure we're all pretty much on those three).
Likes to web surf a little bit.
Likes computers, technology, scifi,
(other
Likes commenting to strangers about those three (and other topics)
Probably a little opinionated. Probably a little insecure in those opinions; (call it "open-minded" thus enjoys reading others opinions.
Likes learning new things from people who know (or at least can convince others that they know).
Probably a bit bored.
Every other characteristic is probably up for grabs.
Over the years, I've conversed with really stupid people, or people who know a lot about microchip design, enough to do it for a living, and for a hobby, they comment intelligently on the latest cosmological data and theories. There are people who are MCSE's, who dig Windoz and believe in a single-vendor solution and dominance (because that's what "the market" dictates) - and there are others who are violently pro open source, and write their own OSes. Lots of people who are web designers. There are very few true democrats OR republicans, just people who are afraid of the other side, and die-hard libertarians, followers of Ayn Rand, and die-hard socialists. Some of us believe we should "melt the guns", and others believe that "an armed society is a polite society". There are a lot of very spiritual people, lots of pagans, even a few satanists, even a few Christians, and then there are a number of solid athiests. And then there are a lot of agnostics. Fans of just about every kind of music imaginable (except Pop - er, hey that's funny, isn't it?:)
Lots of us are unathletic, or don't carry an interest in athletics. Some of us work out 20 hours a week, play football, lots of us are into martial arts.
Some of us were picked on as children for being different, others were embraced and cherished for those differences. Others were just not perceived as being so different.
Many of us are caffeine addicts. Some of us drink, or even consider beer to be a hobby, or an intellectual pursuit.
I'm sure we've all visited a porn site or two.
We all think Cowboy Neal is a big dick.
Yes it's a big wide wired world out there. We're from all over. Different generations, different upbringings, different economic status. Some of us live behind filters, but we're all net-connected, we all have voices that want to be heard, and ears that want to listen, minds that want to learn, and we all dream of a better tomorrow - yet fear the coming dark times. We're from all over. Different generations, different upbringings, different economic status.
Billions and billions of us.
wow. It's fake? I'm impressed. Where did they get the footage? and already doctored up with special effects and everything? This was not a cheap hoax.
70 years from now, when my grandson is a History teacher, I believe that the Internet will be described in his class in exactly these terms:
". . . an Internet user of the year 2000 posted a message, which summed up very concisely what most Internet users of the time were probably feeling:
Personally, I'm sick and tired of the bullshit that 'businessmen' have brought to the internet. I've never seen such greed, selfishness and complete lack of awareness. 95% of them have the ethics of a snake-oil salesman. --
Drop into town, screw everyone over, use up all the resources to push your product, and leave witht he moola, onto the next town/resource that you can extort. "
Speaking of Lucas' career;
Just saw THX1138 the other day, first time in oh, about 15 years, and that scene towards the end, when THX1138 is escaping in the jet car, and it's screaming down the highway/tunnel, and two robo-cops on motorbikes are chasing him - it was VERY x-wing-tie-fighter-death-star-trench-scene-ish. Right down to the sound effects, cuts between the speeding vehicles, cockpit closeups, beeping radar screens showing the bogies getting closer. . .
Otherwise, a rather thoughtful, but boring movie, I strongly recommend any Star Wars fan go rent this movie and check out that scene. It's a riot how similar it is to the death-star scene (that's been ripped off ten thousand times in ten thousand other sci fi movies since then).
oh, I don't think that he, or anyone else really has the answer.
I just want to know if he's thought about it that way.
I've also found that, quite often, if you have a superficial friend, and you open up to them, quite often, you'll never hear from them again after that.
It's very important to find someone like-minded.
I am married, have a son and daughter, and my wife is sort of my best friend by default, as in, we moved out of state, so we don't have our old freindships any more, they've all married, got lives, etc.
;). And thank God, he's pretty good at math, unlike both of his parents. I feel I'll basically be there to warn him if things go bad, not to use it as an excuse to be angry at people. I guess sports isn't that important at this age, or maybe it's different now - the focus where I grew up in Illinois was on basketball and baseball and football. Now, he's growing up in California, and basketball is there, but people aren't fanatical about it, and the kids all like the extreme sports, skateboarding, surfing, stunt-bikes, and he IS much better at basketball this year than last year - so maybe there's hope for him.
:)
She knows of these difficulties, and she suffers from some of the same, and I don't know if it's my fault, or her fault, or if we both have the same problem. At least we have eachother, but her interests are changing, and she's no longer so interested in gaming, or computers (never really was a computer person) -
I haven't "warned" my son, per se. He does seem to have a problem with athletics, but he doesn't seem to have trouble making friends. He's 7. He's very popular at school, especially with the girls
His favorite TV show (after Pokemon - yay! a budding anime fan!) is Bill Nye, the Science Guy. So I know he's not gonna be some meathead jock. (his little sister loves Sailor Moon - so Anime does appear to be a genetic trait