If they have to tell you that they are 'fair and balanced' then its likely that they aren't, but also add in everything that tells you that it 'leans forward', or other crap. The Soviet Unions national newspaper, during the height of the governments paranoid plummet into self destruction, was called 'Pravda' which translates to 'Truth' or 'Justice' in Russian.
The official USSR news outlet during the 20th century was (Pravda), Russian for truth. The other official USSR newspaper was (Izsvestia), which means news.
A running joke among Russians during the last few decades of the Soviet Union: "In Pravda, there is no izvestia, in Isvestia, there is no pravda". Both papers are still in existence today, although in altered format. The running joke still applies.
Yes, newspapers and magazines have deteriorated in recent years. Everything having to do with print or media publishing has deteriorated in recent years. A large part of the blame is the electronic workspace. No one has the editorial, proofreading and fact checking staff they used to have. Those people retired or were fired years ago...because of the second point:
The internet has taken the most important revenue sources: local firms got killed by the big box stores which advertised are now being killed by e-commerce. Personal ads (formerly a surprisingly large part of newspaper revenues) have gone to ebay or craigslist. We all know what's happening to the local auto dealers. The remaining big advertisers no longer are captives of the newspapers and media -- they can now advertise directly to consumers via web ads and email...which leads to the third point:
The very best journalistic talent was always limited...and didn't necessarily come from the journalism schools. The talent will not disappear but may end up in other professions. There is no way that they will be adequately compensated by print mediaand there's no job security anymore.
No internet tax can rescue the situation. Free speech funded by or beholden to the government is government speech.
I used to read four major newspapers a day. I'm down to two. I find myself looking forward mostly to the funnies, which I can easily read online and might even pay for if they weren't DRMed to death. If the newspapers tollgate their content, I won't read it.
Some new business model will arise, count on it. Freedom of the press belongs to those that have one. Now, everyone does.
Don't cry for the news media and don't rescue them. Keep the government the hell out of the news business.
All rights are "legal fictions". Without law, the only rights you would have are the old fahioned rights: the right to kill, loot, destroy, take, rape and pillage (assuming your private army was competent) or conversely the right to be a victim of others 'rights'. If you think I'm being facetious, travel to one of the 'failed' states in the world -- they have killed all their lawyers and judges and live in a state of primal happiness. Be sure to update yoiur will before you go.
Or better yet, go live in Saudi Arabia: No law but how the local mullah interprets the Koran on that particular day, no precedent, no lawyers, no judges, you plead your own case and the verdict is nonappealable. No insurance, either, so if you hit someone with your car and don't have a lot of friends and family, you're toast. Ah, the joys of a simple world without lawyers.
Corporations as we know them today did not exist in Jefferson's day. Until late in the 19th century, the only way a corporation could be formed was through a legislative act granting a charter. That meant that only the biggest and/or most politically connected enterprises could obtain the limited liability and other rights of corporate existence. Today, anyone can form a corporation by filing papers and paying a fee.
Peer reviewed journals have problems too. There have been several well documented hoaxes perpetrated in peer reviewed journals -- only some of which were intended to illustrate how easy it is to get published. (You could look it up in wikipedia!)
The cause is a common human error - if something SEEMS true and it would take effort to PROVE it true most people will simply assume the truth to be established. Scientists and historians are as likely to do this as anyone even though their professional standards are intended to prevent it. It's the "truthiness" error and everyone does it. Whether wikipedia or traditionally edited encyclopedias are better at detecting falsehood and fact corruption is unknowable. But wikis can be corrected much more quickly and if you use wikipedia as tool rather than a primary source it can be quite a good one.
Here at RarkCO Enterprises International, we are PROUD to have been ISO 9000 certified. After a lengthy, disruptive and expensive ISO 9000 audit, all of our processes are documented in detail and our ISO 9000 audit demonstrates that we are a leader in our industry in JIT process, financial controls and market transparency. Furthermore, our risk management controls are top tier and our customers and shareholders value our rigid adherence to the highest standards of quality and honesty... --- HEY! WTF??
(THUD!!! CRASH!!! (sounds of secretaries screaming))
Well the obvious answer is to require every citizen to carry portable nuclear weapons. As this strategy has worked fine in the macro level(i.e., the Cold War ended without a nuclear exchange despite huge stockpiles of ICBMs), it should work fine on the micro level as well.
Example: Mugger walks up to citizen, points nuclear missile at pedestrian: "Gimme your wallet!!"
Response: Pedestrian pushes red button on watch, mugger (and surrounding quarter acre of real estate) are instantly vaporized.
It would take only a few well publicized exchanges of this sort to reduce violent crime to near-zero levels.
I think the obvious objections to this are easily met; the obvious one is that children will get into the nuclear weapon cabinet at home and wipe out the neighborhood. Clearly this would have adverse effects for the neighborhood, but again, a few instances of this would contribute significantly to an increase in neighborly interest in each other's welfare, and more general attention paid to the use of beneficial child discipline and cabinet locks. In addition, while such precautions cannot not universally effective, there would be a long term improvement of the species through Darwinian evolution.
For the unconvinced, a 5 year pilot program, say, in Britain, would be sufficient to prove the utility of this reform. (Of course, it goes without saying that the economy and employment levels would be substantially boosted by the increase in production of mass market consumer nuclear devices)
I'm sorry, but I've copyrighted all the vowels, y and the consonents S, F, C and K. All of you should expect a scary letter from my law firm shortly. I would also recommend that after you read this you not make any exclamations utilizing any of the letters in the "F" word, as that will leave you liable for treble damages and a court order directing that you never speak again.
You're right! It's so obvious! What fools we've been! The secret to lowering obscenely high gas prices is...Sue the Saudis! And the Russians! And the Chinese!
I would argue that the Wii may be as revolutionary as 'Pong'.
Reasons?
From now on, gamers that have played Wii will no longer be content to sit and blast aliens / monsters while their body sits in a chair in suspended animation for hours on end. Any game that doesn't have a great physical component will be considered obsolete. Wii has basically liberated gamers from the couch, and that's as big a change as 3-d graphics was when it first came out.
...and how do you know that 500 shells have been found or that they were duds? CNN? How do you know that any of the things you've cited as fact ever happened?...how does CNN know? From the US Army? How does the army know? Who (what 'experts', what are their names, where do they live?) actually looked at the "bombs"? How does anyone know that the unnamed and unnameable experts are telling the truth?
There's hardly a thing that any one of us knows that has not been accepted from some outside source, often without any checking on our part whatever. Even the evidence of our own eyes and ears is not reliable -- eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable at identifying suspects last seen under harrowing circumstances.
The TRUTH is that very little of what we know is actually acquired directly by our own senses. However, most of us learn to trust information from sources we believe are 'usually reliable', and could not survive for long in the world if we did not.
Conspiracy theorists live in their own well-deserved personal hell, because they don't believe in anything, and live perpetually on edge waiting for the hordes of ruthlessly efficient [bogeyman of choice] to break down the doors.
However, "truthiness" is a sort of halfway state of belief: it implies that even though the factual basis for an selected assertion is known to be lacking or known to be false, the essential underlying "fact" has to be true because it fits the preconceived view of the world of the believer. In effect it's a 'I believe I can fly' attitude. It may be completely safe to have such a belief as long as you don't test it by stepping outside the window. But reality deals harshly with truthiness. Search and rescue teams pull the living and dead out of the mountains on a regular basis because novice hikers "believe" that they have acquired top-notch survival skills from their ancestors or from reading a few books or watching TV.
In other words, "truthiness" describes the belief system of fools, of which there are a great many in public and private life. If history is a guide, this is pretty much a steady state affair. "Truthiness" is a pretty good word, even if born of irony, and deserves to be added to the dictionary.
Eloquently put - and a pretty good explanation of why adulthood is a declining state. I'm guessing that EVERYONE wishes at one time or another that someone would step in and take care of everything and clean up all the messes. Accepting that this is not possible and that it is necessary to accept responsibility for oneself, one's family and one's society is a 'boring adult' message that is the subject of pervasive mocking on a pop and high culture level.
And why not? In a largely affluent society, it's easy to stay disconnected and entertained. But when tough times arrive, the hubbub of demands, complaining and accusation are those of children ("unfair!") wrested away from playtime rather than of adults.
Same as it ever was. Every affluent culture in history has eventually crashed, partly as a result of its own prosperity and the corrosive effects of wealth upon culture and society.
The jihadists and Islamofascists that seek to take down Western culture are not stupid and are depending on history repeating itself. But we are also not stupid -- just childish and narcissistic because we can be. I pray for the sake of our grandchildren and great grandchildren that when the tough times occur as they always do that we will be able to drop our toys and do what's required of adults.
>BTW. You are absolutely right. Even friendly countries spy on each other. There was a story going around a >while ago about an embassy had to be totally torn down because the local workers who built it had planted >many microphones in it.
That wasn't a "story going around", it was the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow, which was to be built (on Soviet insistence) with Russian labor and materials. The Soviets took this opportunity to build so many listening devices in the structure, that the U.S., after a security review, refused to occupy it and construction stopped in 1985. After considering tearing it down and restarting from scratch, and a 15 year wait, the decision was made to tear off the top two floors, and put on 4 new floors with US security screened labor and US materials flown in (undoubtedly at a nauseatingly high cost).
Let me hasten to add that the U.S. has also mounted its own surveillance of the Soviet embassy in Washington -- for those of you smarmy types that will reflexively post a "US does it too!" reply.
Visit the US Spy Museum in Washington, D.C....well worth the visit when you are there, and something of an eye opener for folks that think that security and intelligence are an absurd waste of time.
You say that jokingly, but Attila the Hun, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, the Khmer Rouge, the Iranian ayatollahs and Al Qaida (many other examples) also have sought to eliminate the most intelligent members of their societies because they could form the nucleus of political and social opposition to tyranny. At best, tyrants will try to coopt the most intelligent, but usually they just imprison and execute them.
I guess that next week's CSI show is a thoughtful treatment of the obvious linik between TV and random teen violence stemming from watching too many TV detective shows. I may just rush out and buy TIVO to record that one.
"The words 'freedom', 'democracy' and 'demonstration' "
Yes, but what of fr33d0m, d3m0cracy, and dem0nstrat1on?
I wonder whether it's easier to censor written language in languages that use ideographs rather than letters.
Whereas it is relatively easy to substitute / drop letters in words written in roman alphabets and still get the meaning across, ideographs ARE the word iself or are necessary in forming the combination of ideographs for expressing the word. Obviously, there are all kinds of cultural or literary allusions that a writer could fall back on to substitute for forbidden or filtered words, but I guess the question is whether automated censors and filters work better in Asian languages than in Western languages. Anyone have a knowledge-based opinion on this?
Can you say Eta Carinae? I knew you could. The link shows the supermassive unstable star Eta Carinae, just one of millions of unstable stars in the universe which may go supernova at any time (Eta Carinae may go soon, probably within a half million years). Trouble is that it's a relatively close 7,500 - 10,000 light years away in OUR galaxy. If it blows, it could end up sterilizing the neighborhood, including our planet.
Also see http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/etacar.html. There is a lot of weird stuff in the universe, some of it relatively close to us. Our galaxy is about 250,000 LY in diameter, the nearest neighbor galaxy about 2.5 million LY away.) Of course, with our relatively puny lifespans of 80 or so years, we miss most of what's going on around us, and don't pay enough attention to recorded astronomical and geological events to realize that our assumptions about what is normal are completely unfounded. Ignorance is bliss! Woohoo! Pass the Fritos!
> At one time, he would have got the clerk hanged.
>Back when paper money was first used in Britain,... [fond reminiscence of ancient vicious English criminal law practices snippied!]
Slashdot Mirror
616 is the US area code for Grand Rapids, Michigan. Grand Rapids is the home of the headbanger/metal band Pop Evil.
All secrets are known to the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, PBUH.
If they have to tell you that they are 'fair and balanced' then its likely that they aren't, but also add in everything that tells you that it 'leans forward', or other crap.
The Soviet Unions national newspaper, during the height of the governments paranoid plummet into self destruction, was called 'Pravda' which translates to 'Truth' or 'Justice' in Russian.
The official USSR news outlet during the 20th century was (Pravda), Russian for truth. The other official USSR newspaper was (Izsvestia), which means news.
A running joke among Russians during the last few decades of the Soviet Union: "In Pravda, there is no izvestia, in Isvestia, there is no pravda". Both papers are still in existence today, although in altered format. The running joke still applies.
Fair and balanced! Fair and balanced!
(Repeat until liberal heads start exploding)
Three points:
Yes, newspapers and magazines have deteriorated in recent years. Everything having to do with print or media publishing has deteriorated in recent years. A large part of the blame is the electronic workspace. No one has the editorial, proofreading and fact checking staff they used to have. Those people retired or were fired years ago...because of the second point:
The internet has taken the most important revenue sources: local firms got killed by the big box stores which advertised are now being killed by e-commerce. Personal ads (formerly a surprisingly large part of newspaper revenues) have gone to ebay or craigslist. We all know what's happening to the local auto dealers. The remaining big advertisers no longer are captives of the newspapers and media -- they can now advertise directly to consumers via web ads and email...which leads to the third point:
The very best journalistic talent was always limited...and didn't necessarily come from the journalism schools. The talent will not disappear but may end up in other professions. There is no way that they will be adequately compensated by print mediaand there's no job security anymore.
No internet tax can rescue the situation. Free speech funded by or beholden to the government is government speech.
I used to read four major newspapers a day. I'm down to two. I find myself looking forward mostly to the funnies, which I can easily read online and might even pay for if they weren't DRMed to death. If the newspapers tollgate their content, I won't read it.
Some new business model will arise, count on it. Freedom of the press belongs to those that have one. Now, everyone does.
Don't cry for the news media and don't rescue them. Keep the government the hell out of the news business.
All rights are "legal fictions". Without law, the only rights you would have are the old fahioned rights: the right to kill, loot, destroy, take, rape and pillage (assuming your private army was competent) or conversely the right to be a victim of others 'rights'. If you think I'm being facetious, travel to one of the 'failed' states in the world -- they have killed all their lawyers and judges and live in a state of primal happiness. Be sure to update yoiur will before you go.
Or better yet, go live in Saudi Arabia: No law but how the local mullah interprets the Koran on that particular day, no precedent, no lawyers, no judges, you plead your own case and the verdict is nonappealable. No insurance, either, so if you hit someone with your car and don't have a lot of friends and family, you're toast. Ah, the joys of a simple world without lawyers.
Corporations as we know them today did not exist in Jefferson's day. Until late in the 19th century, the only way a corporation could be formed was through a legislative act granting a charter. That meant that only the biggest and/or most politically connected enterprises could obtain the limited liability and other rights of corporate existence. Today, anyone can form a corporation by filing papers and paying a fee.
Peer reviewed journals have problems too. There have been several well documented hoaxes perpetrated in peer reviewed journals -- only some of which were intended to illustrate how easy it is to get published. (You could look it up in wikipedia!)
The cause is a common human error - if something SEEMS true and it would take effort to PROVE it true most people will simply assume the truth to be established. Scientists and historians are as likely to do this as anyone even though their professional standards are intended to prevent it. It's the "truthiness" error and everyone does it. Whether wikipedia or traditionally edited encyclopedias are better at detecting falsehood and fact corruption is unknowable. But wikis can be corrected much more quickly and if you use wikipedia as tool rather than a primary source it can be quite a good one.
Here at RarkCO Enterprises International, we are PROUD to have been ISO 9000 certified. After a lengthy, disruptive and expensive ISO 9000 audit, all of our processes are documented in detail and our ISO 9000 audit demonstrates that we are a leader in our industry in JIT process, financial controls and market transparency. Furthermore, our risk management controls are top tier and our customers and shareholders value our rigid adherence to the highest standards of quality and honesty... --- HEY! WTF??
(THUD!!! CRASH!!! (sounds of secretaries screaming))
** HANDS UP! FREEZE! THIS IS THE FBI! **
(sounds of handcuffs being locked)
um...gotta go...
Well the obvious answer is to require every citizen to carry portable nuclear weapons. As this strategy has worked fine in the macro level(i.e., the Cold War ended without a nuclear exchange despite huge stockpiles of ICBMs), it should work fine on the micro level as well.
Example: Mugger walks up to citizen, points nuclear missile at pedestrian: "Gimme your wallet!!"
Response: Pedestrian pushes red button on watch, mugger (and surrounding quarter acre of real estate) are instantly vaporized.
It would take only a few well publicized exchanges of this sort to reduce violent crime to near-zero levels.
I think the obvious objections to this are easily met; the obvious one is that children will get into the nuclear weapon cabinet at home and wipe out the neighborhood. Clearly this would have adverse effects for the neighborhood, but again, a few instances of this would contribute significantly to an increase in neighborly interest in each other's welfare, and more general attention paid to the use of beneficial child discipline and cabinet locks. In addition, while such precautions cannot not universally effective, there would be a long term improvement of the species through Darwinian evolution.
For the unconvinced, a 5 year pilot program, say, in Britain, would be sufficient to prove the utility of this reform. (Of course, it goes without saying that the economy and employment levels would be substantially boosted by the increase in production of mass market consumer nuclear devices)
I'm sorry, but I've copyrighted all the vowels, y and the consonents S, F, C and K. All of you should expect a scary letter from my law firm shortly. I would also recommend that after you read this you not make any exclamations utilizing any of the letters in the "F" word, as that will leave you liable for treble damages and a court order directing that you never speak again.
You're right! It's so obvious! What fools we've been! The secret to lowering obscenely high gas prices is...Sue the Saudis! And the Russians! And the Chinese!
What's that NY AG's number again?
Could you repost that comment, but this time without any "fuck"s? Than-q.
I would argue that the Wii may be as revolutionary as 'Pong'.
Reasons?
From now on, gamers that have played Wii will no longer be content to sit and blast aliens / monsters while their body sits in a chair in suspended animation for hours on end. Any game that doesn't have a great physical component will be considered obsolete. Wii has basically liberated gamers from the couch, and that's as big a change as 3-d graphics was when it first came out.
...and how do you know that 500 shells have been found or that they were duds? CNN? How do you know that any of the things you've cited as fact ever happened? ...how does CNN know? From the US Army? How does the army know? Who (what 'experts', what are their names, where do they live?) actually looked at the "bombs"? How does anyone know that the unnamed and unnameable experts are telling the truth?
There's hardly a thing that any one of us knows that has not been accepted from some outside source, often without any checking on our part whatever. Even the evidence of our own eyes and ears is not reliable -- eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable at identifying suspects last seen under harrowing circumstances.
The TRUTH is that very little of what we know is actually acquired directly by our own senses. However, most of us learn to trust information from sources we believe are 'usually reliable', and could not survive for long in the world if we did not.
Conspiracy theorists live in their own well-deserved personal hell, because they don't believe in anything, and live perpetually on edge waiting for the hordes of ruthlessly efficient [bogeyman of choice] to break down the doors.
However, "truthiness" is a sort of halfway state of belief: it implies that even though the factual basis for an selected assertion is known to be lacking or known to be false, the essential underlying "fact" has to be true because it fits the preconceived view of the world of the believer. In effect it's a 'I believe I can fly' attitude. It may be completely safe to have such a belief as long as you don't test it by stepping outside the window. But reality deals harshly with truthiness. Search and rescue teams pull the living and dead out of the mountains on a regular basis because novice hikers "believe" that they have acquired top-notch survival skills from their ancestors or from reading a few books or watching TV.
In other words, "truthiness" describes the belief system of fools, of which there are a great many in public and private life. If history is a guide, this is pretty much a steady state affair. "Truthiness" is a pretty good word, even if born of irony, and deserves to be added to the dictionary.
"In this best of all possible worlds, all things are for the best" CANDIDE, Voltaire
Eloquently put - and a pretty good explanation of why adulthood is a declining state. I'm guessing that EVERYONE wishes at one time or another that someone would step in and take care of everything and clean up all the messes. Accepting that this is not possible and that it is necessary to accept responsibility for oneself, one's family and one's society is a 'boring adult' message that is the subject of pervasive mocking on a pop and high culture level.
And why not? In a largely affluent society, it's easy to stay disconnected and entertained. But when tough times arrive, the hubbub of demands, complaining and accusation are those of children ("unfair!") wrested away from playtime rather than of adults.
Same as it ever was. Every affluent culture in history has eventually crashed, partly as a result of its own prosperity and the corrosive effects of wealth upon culture and society.
The jihadists and Islamofascists that seek to take down Western culture are not stupid and are depending on history repeating itself. But we are also not stupid -- just childish and narcissistic because we can be. I pray for the sake of our grandchildren and great grandchildren that when the tough times occur as they always do that we will be able to drop our toys and do what's required of adults.
/DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! If you don't,
/ you're a piece of shit.
Oh. Well, you've certainly convinced me...
Now get the hell away from me.
Actually this post ought to have been modded 'funny'.
Er-- we may have perfected boobies, but I don't think we invented them.
>BTW. You are absolutely right. Even friendly countries spy on each other. There was a story going around a
>while ago about an embassy had to be totally torn down because the local workers who built it had planted
>many microphones in it.
That wasn't a "story going around", it was the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow, which was to be built (on Soviet insistence) with Russian labor and materials. The Soviets took this opportunity to build so many listening devices in the structure, that the U.S., after a security review, refused to occupy it and construction stopped in 1985. After considering tearing it down and restarting from scratch, and a 15 year wait, the decision was made to tear off the top two floors, and put on 4 new floors with US security screened labor and US materials flown in (undoubtedly at a nauseatingly high cost).
Let me hasten to add that the U.S. has also mounted its own surveillance of the Soviet embassy in Washington -- for those of you smarmy types that will reflexively post a "US does it too!" reply.
Visit the US Spy Museum in Washington, D.C....well worth the visit when you are there, and something of an eye opener for folks that think that security and intelligence are an absurd waste of time.
Feel free to google it.
You say that jokingly, but Attila the Hun, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, the Khmer Rouge, the Iranian ayatollahs and Al Qaida (many other examples) also have sought to eliminate the most intelligent members of their societies because they could form the nucleus of political and social opposition to tyranny. At best, tyrants will try to coopt the most intelligent, but usually they just imprison and execute them.
I guess that next week's CSI show is a thoughtful treatment of the obvious linik between TV and random teen violence stemming from watching too many TV detective shows. I may just rush out and buy TIVO to record that one.
Yes, but what of fr33d0m, d3m0cracy, and dem0nstrat1on?
I wonder whether it's easier to censor written language in languages that use ideographs rather than letters.
Whereas it is relatively easy to substitute / drop letters in words written in roman alphabets and still get the meaning across, ideographs ARE the word iself or are necessary in forming the combination of ideographs for expressing the word. Obviously, there are all kinds of cultural or literary allusions that a writer could fall back on to substitute for forbidden or filtered words, but I guess the question is whether automated censors and filters work better in Asian languages than in Western languages. Anyone have a knowledge-based opinion on this?
Also see http://www.seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/etacar.html. There is a lot of weird stuff in the universe, some of it relatively close to us. Our galaxy is about 250,000 LY in diameter, the nearest neighbor galaxy about 2.5 million LY away.) Of course, with our relatively puny lifespans of 80 or so years, we miss most of what's going on around us, and don't pay enough attention to recorded astronomical and geological events to realize that our assumptions about what is normal are completely unfounded. Ignorance is bliss! Woohoo! Pass the Fritos!
> At one time, he would have got the clerk hanged.
>Back when paper money was first used in Britain,...
[fond reminiscence of ancient vicious English criminal law practices snippied!]