...okay, guys, I know I am asking for it. But here is what I just posted in 'that other place'... You'll notice that I pose no solutions, but I do believe that I have a valid rationale for keeping this sort of tripe away from the children. I skimmed through most of the other posts and didn't see anything along these lines, so here it is. I will respond to one post that seemed to say that parents need to be more responsible in raising their kids in this environment: parents cannot raise their children effectively in the current environment. There's just too many influences, and IMHO, too many Evil influences. Read on to get a feel for my viewpoint, and then feel free to respond! These are my thoughts after long deliberation, so please do me a favor and give me due consideration. Don't dis me. And try not to flame me as an AC; you're abusing the system and I won't respond. *sigh* that said, here goes:
After reading the passages in the FCC document (highly entertaining!), can anyone really defend their airing on the public airwaves? Those of us who are old enough to appreciate the content can obtain it readily from other sources, and I maintain that it is in the best interests of our society that we protect the children (do it for the little children!!! Of course, who else do we do these things for?) from being exposed to this information. Ironically, the same moralists are the ones who applauded the release of the Starr Report in our local newspaper. The Ends do not justify the Means, but apparently they do for Them.
Now as to my reasoning as to why this information is harmful. I am against most of the methods employed by the Christian Right, as I believe they
are neither Christian nor Right, but I had to figure out for myself what constituted the reasoning behind the Laws of God, if only to figure out my own morality. What I came up with is this: the brand of Love that is portrayed to children between mutually consenting adults is important to their understanding of what is Right and Wrong. I think that a perfectly idealized love* is almost non-sexual in nature. In this idealized Love of, say a Man for a Woman, he cherishes her and holds her more important than his own life. In any case, the object of his love is her soul, her essence. This sort of Love is self-renewing and always fulfilling. It is the sort of love that grows with time in a deeper intimacy and abiding trust. The heart and the soul of the lover become filled with Joy and Life takes on a meaning that transcends the ordinary day-to-day events.
In contrast, the sort of attraction a Man has for a Woman as portrayed by these shock jocks totally denies the soul of the person, and objectifies
her as mere flesh. The problem here is that the object of desire is the flesh itself, which has no soul, so there is nothing further to do once the
object has been er, conquered. This leads to immense dissatisfaction in the psyche, as one realizes that what one thinks he has been searching for is found, and then it's done. It then becomes like a drug, it's all about one's own sexual needs, not about any joining of souls, and the problem becomes one of maintaining the excitement and the impetus for continuing pursuit of this inner drive. The only way to maintain That kind of high, is, like a drug, to increase the dosage - you must next have two partners, or use vibrators, whips, chains, multiple partners. You cheat, you tomcat around, you pay money for it. It is very much like the current climate in radio. Once advertisers learned that titillation turns heads (walk through any video store and count the number of times a big ol'.45 caliber pistol is posed oh-so-close to a pair of ruby-red lips), they opened up a door to something that ultimately had to lead (like the frog in the pan of water on the stove, slowly until it's boiling) to what we have today. And you know what? It shocks you, it turns your head, and it even stimulates you (that is, until you are numb). But it is guaranteed to Never fulfill you. In fact, it is guaranteed to frustrate you and provoke your anxiety.
But that of course is the nature of evil, to consume your soul. You learn that the hard way at your own peril.
So we as a society should continue to punish those who, in their own misguided notion of fun and need to create an allegience among our youth, would teach them to be titillated by such porn. Because there is a much more important way to Love. Because our Children need to learn that first. This will save them when they are exposed to the various genitalia flouted at them over the course of their lives.
Yes. Do it... for the children.:)
(*- By the way. In a perfectly idealized love? The sex is Great!)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that most modern fighters are built aerodynamically marginally- (or downright Un-) stable and that it is Only computers that keep them in the air. I am sure I read that about the Grumman X-29, a forward-swept wing configuration. From the quoted text: The particular forward swept wing, close-coupled canard design used on the X-29 was unstable. The X-29's flight control system compensated for this instability by sensing flight conditions such as attitude and speed, and through computer processing, continually adjusted the control surfaces with up to 40 commands each second.
So it's not just the Osprey... but you're right, that sort of versatility is really asking for trouble, and I bet there are all sorts of marginally stable yet allowable transition states.
So what is it with those French programmers, anyway?:)
When I was working on the Systems Requirements for the EELV program, I recall that the Ariane 5 struck us all with a horrific sense of dread. This dread comes about when you realize that, no matter how hard you try, you cannot simulate all conditions that software must function in and all situations that it must respond to. The SRS (Software Requirements Specification) tries to cover all the bases, but while you can specify environments for hardware (temperature, humidity, acceleration, vibration, etc...), you cannot often provide a spec for all that might happen to software. In the Ariane 5 case, they changed the hardware; I believe that they upgraded to a new main booster whose horizontal velocity capability exceeded that of the previous booster, but they decided to re-use the software from the old one. When the rocket started going sideways, the value exceeded the bounds and the s/w crashed. Ahhh, here.
I am writing this for a reason: Engineers and software developers often scoff at requirements, preferring to design rather than focus on What they are Designing To. Without a proper SRS, you really don't know if you've covered all bases. Even with one you don't.
But this stuff ain't web pages, man, it's Serious Stuff! And a big portion of the budget needs to go into Requirements Development, at least 25% (actually I once read that the Japanese put 40% into up-front requirements and conceptualization, thus eating our lunch in the automotive industry).
What you don't spend in up-front requirements development you spend in test and verification. What you don't spend in either, well, you spend that in environmental clean-up, insurance costs, and lives.
Sounds like the Osprey folks should have paid a little more attention to their SRA (Systems Requirements Analysis).
Incidentally, while I Understand the massive cost savings (up front!) available through Object Oriented Systems Analysis (emphasis on reuse!), remember that there are no easy shortcuts, and be aware of the dangers inherent in cutting and pasting!
This is an important point. I am beginning to believe that B2B is a bastardization of the P2P concept in that the First-Class citizens retain their preemininence, and the 'fringe users' stay on the fringe. Napster (the only successful example of P2P yet, IMO) changed the way we all looked at our computer. Suddenly we had a reason to leave the comp on all night, and it enriched our lives without costing a cent. Obviously the corporations could not have this and had to quash Napster immediately.
In my opinion, there is a war going on between people and corporations over the use and rights inherent in the Internet. People have no clout to stop the corps from doing whatever they want with the net (except for thousands and thousand of posts, which sometimes actually works), but corps with their gaggle of lawyers are quick and eager to point out and punish those who take the net and use it in innovative, if costly ways.
What started out as 1) a wonderful system of free information dissemination has devolved into either 2a) a way to harness each and every transaction into a money-making proposition, or 2b) a way to get really really neat stuff for free.
Of course, it will end up as neither, and the only people once again, who will realize the full potential of the net will be lawyers, as the net becomes the equivalent of modern television. I hope I'm wrong, but P2P may be reduced to nothing because there is no money to be made without that broker between every txn...
Here's something interesting. Did you know that you can defrost a can of Orange Juice in a microwave without taking the bottom (metal) lid off? I was told that metal should Never be put in a microwave, but there ya have it, folks. You can put metal in the mw, but I guess it has to lie low to avoid the rays??? I dunno, but it works.
I'm not so sure about this claim, and find it interesting that there is no corroborating evidence elsewhere on the net (I tried, believe me). If this isn't "Cold Fusion II", then Sheldon Schultz has some explaining to do. Why is this not published in the Scientific American?
I suspect we will read about it in the paper tomorrow, and there will be an Entertainment Tonight feature on it later in the week. What ever happened to responsible journalism and scientific inquiry?
Hype alone will not change the laws of Physics. Although it is true that light will bend according to the refractive index, it is the angle itseld that determines the index of Refraction, if I recall correctly. Therefore, light will bend one way when going from air into glass, and another when going from air into a vacuum. So which way does light go here? If it goes from a vacuum into the medium in the same way it would go from air into a vacuum (or glass into air, i.e., from a higher to a lower medium), then, okay, you have something there. But why doesn't the article bother explaining the phenomena?
It reminds me of that article wherein they claimed that they found something that travels faster than the speed of light. I am still somewhat dubious on that, since it is only infomation that has passed out of that medium faster than a light beam would have traversed the medium, but not the initial pulse: that was absorbed, I believe.
Of course, I am just one guy. I could be wrong here. But not about the dearth of explanation...
About the "next big thing". It seems to me that in the era we are in of over-hyping everything, that you cannot tell which will be the next big thing until the people actually adopt it. It must transcend its own hype, in other words. Neither you, me, nor Katz can make something happen just by stating it.
Hopefully the Free distribution of information will someday make hype (and stories like this one, which seems merely to jump on the hype bandwagon) a thing of the past. No longer will marketeers (CueCat comes to mind) be able to snow us with their claims and blue-sky talk. The proof will finally be in the pudding. Napster proved that.
Dude, this isn't SPAM. Spam is when one guy sends out a million emails.
When a million pissed-off citizens send emails to one company, it simply isn't Spam. It is a call to attention. It is a show of force, ideally.
So, I am going to join in the throng. I think I'll just write 'you guys suck!'
Yeah, that'll make me feel better...
here goes {clikcliktypetype}
Ahhhhhh........
Now, I wonder if they'll contact me.
Oh, guy, excuse me, but what does "firm (but polite) disapproval" mean, anyway... If I sit here and give a Real Mean Church Lady look at their webpage, do you think it will get a better reaction from them?
I prefer the million emails myself... okay, okay, 500 emails in reality prolly. But I hope at least they know we are Still Out There, and we are Still Watching!
I notice that the generation behind me is generally less social than I remember us being, even among their peers, which probably is a bad thing. Isolation tends to increase anxiety about one's self and one's role in the local society. It is probably a downward spiral: isolation begets anxiety begets more isolation...
The other thing I would mention to you:
Have you ever sought isolation by packing your backpack with enough to live for a few days, grabbing your dog and taking off for the desert/mountain/whatever wilderness, all by yourself? When you do this, you realize just how godawful stark the existence of the primitive societies was. And you also recover your bodies' natural rhythms. You go to sleep at 7pm and you wake up at 6am. And then you spend an hour preparing and eating food. And then you watch the sun as it crawls across the sky. And you go a little crazy because you can't check your email, or watch a movie, or play a video game. It is a remarkable experience for our generation!
I recommend you take a girlfriend along, too... there are other natural rhythms you may find you have forgotten...
I think that is exactly what I am saying about 'connectedness'. A child is saved when one (it only takes one!) of these elements succeeds in giving the child a feeling that he lives in a caring world. I probably forgot one or two more elements. One of these is clearly the Church that has totally failed to 1) enlighten people of the true message of what All (valid) Religions are trying to say about human nature, and 2) provide a strong enough sense of a moral code to those so-called Adherents of the Creed to keep them from becoming morally corrupt.
As far as giving a child what he needs, I sometimes wonder that a television that operated in a truly enlightened sense couldn't... nahhh, strike that... TV is the wrong medium all around.
I recall when I had my darkest moments in my life, however, and felt alone and unwanted and uncared for, that it was God As I Knew Him who saved me. Who knows what I might have done if there was instead Satan leering and laughing at me (in whatever guise), and a Peacemaker lying on the table next to me?
Instead, thank God, I had the peace of my circle of friends and Pink Floyd on the turntable... Connected, Yes!:)
It was kind of a two-sided statement. On the one hand I would be criticizing the NRA/Christian Right for being stubborn / untrusting, but I was also careful to criticize the Left for name-calling.
I could have also written "Not that gun control advocates aren't nazis, but that they are too unrealistic. Not that teachers' unions aren't self-interested socialists, but that calling them names doesn't allow them to trust the administration enough to concede their culpability." Then I would have gotten letters from other people.
At some point there will be a crisis real enough that we see the need to stop pointing fingers and come to love our children as parents, educators, law enforcement and entertainers alike. To me it's like being a toxic polluter: maybe if his child developed respiratory problems due to the sludge he put into his own drinking water, he would stop polluting because it was wrong, the bottom line be damned.
No matter what Hillary says, that phrase is important because it points closer to what it is that allows for the evil suggestion of a student's Final Solution to enter his brain and seem like the Only Solution.
Stay with me here, I think I have part of the answer, and a damn sight bigger part than a politician would dare try to tackle.
The "village" in this instance is the environment of the kid; this includes parents, school authorities, his peers and friends, TV, video games and computer games. From this village he forms his opinion of the world and obtains a sense of 'connectedness'. 'Connectedness' in this sense represents his relationship with his village: i.e., he gets what he needs from his environment and in return he is responsible for contributing his part to the environment ('he' is generic here, okay ladies?); he feels connected to it, a part of it.
But our village is burnt out.
The parents have skewed values and pursue money at the expense of time with their children. The child is latch-key and unsupervised and unloved in a real sense.
The school environment is composed of overworked and burnt-out teachers: sure they Could care, but who Cares if they Care? So none of them connect with the troubled teen in a realistic manner. And the teen feels inadequate to approach them for help; it certainly isn't encouraged in this day and age. Teachers are Not Parents, but they play them in the classroom.
And now for the Active elements in the Boy's young life! TV actively plays teens against their parents, portraying them as the enemy and corrupt and evil. Kids buy into this because they want power and ally themselves with a 'villager' who appears to be their ally. But it isn't their ally; it is their 'wormtongue', placing messages of destruction into the child's mind. No one would argue that TV is a poor parent for a child. TV actively increases the level of anxiety in the teen's mind... I could go on and on about this, but I think we all agree its fairly evident.
Finally, and in league with the media, is the interactive world, the electronic world of messages that play into the natural tendencies of a child's aggression. He doesn't roughhouse with Dad, he doesn't play capture the flag with his friends, he isn't wrestling in the gym. No, he is sitting in front of a screen blowing the bejeezus out of a bunch of frightening images, getting a subtle (not so subtle?) rush of adrenaline (adrenaline, the drug of choice for Americans, bar none) in doing so. And, as Ashcroft correctly if misguidedly asserts, learning how to kill.
Finally, add the complete humiliation day in and day out of his peers, the final element of his village, taunting and ridiculing him freely and
without supervision. Nothing will stop this daily terror.
Oh no, add one more thing.
Give him a gun.
Therein lies the recipe for these disasters. And when you add the sensationalism and copycat solicitation provided by the media, you really shouldn't be surprised in the monsters you have created.
It takes a village, alright. A village of village idiots.
Last thing. All you single-cause zealots who use these tragedies to foster your cause are doing nothing to help. You add heat but little light to the discussion. Banning guns would help but it ain't gonna happen. The Ten Commandments in school halls would remind us all who is really in charge here (White Christians, not God), but would lessen the alienation of our troubled youth not one whit. Punishing Hollywood, punishing parents, laying blame on Any Single Thing is perpetuating a vicious spiral that gets us nowhere. So please, if you care to respond to any of this, keep that in mine when you do. It is a complicated problem and it might even be one that cannot be solved today or even ever. But we can't make headway if we fall back into old and tired arguments. Not that the NRA isn't an idiot, but that it is too thickheaded and stubborn. Not that Christians aren't the new Nazis, but that calling them names doesn't allow them to trust America enough to open a dialog. We need a brand new paradigm, just like the old paradigm that we once held sacred, albeit only for the landed gentry. Perhaps if we can extend it to All Men and Women and Children, the village can have meaning again for a nation of alienated and Disconnected youth.
(Reprinted from a Plastic article I wrote. I only got one karma point, but a bunch of replies.:)
Well, it didn't seem like a puff piece or a publicity statement. But I take it merely as a statement of his attitudes. He has a lot of influence in Congress, as you probably know, and his approach is probably emblematic of current mindset in Hollywood / content industry.
Disney also seems to have a lot of loyal fans, at least in my small circle of acquaintances. I was glad that Boucher, at least wasn't gaga over Disney, or I suspect he would have said different things about copyrights.
It would be interesting to hear some of those boardroom discussions...
I really don't think it's the worst thing either, and compared to STRIKING THROUGH THE WORLD SERIES it isn't much of an inconvenience.
If you didn't understand that baseball is All About Money Then - the only previous time a WS wasn't held was during WWII - and fans be damned because we are such loyal saps that they can do anything to them and we'll always come back, then you never will.
BTW, don't you think this will fall flat on it's e-face? Does anybody have any figures on how the NBA revenue is faring?
Michael Eisner was on Charlie Rose the other night and he talked about the extent to which he wanted control over the medium. Addressing the Napster issue, he said that he wanted all people to think of stealing content from providers as the equivalent of stealing an apple from an applecart. He allowed that 10% will still pirate stuff over the internet but "there's always that 10% in anything", and he alluded that he could live with that. What he didn't want was Joe Sixpack thinking it was 'cool' to download stuff for free.
My point and how it relates to your post: Eisner is seeking not Draconian controls on the Internet to catch people, but rather a closed-market system that protects the content providers' interests so that they will remain content providers. He sees piracy as threatening the viability of movie studios.
So what he really wants to control is not necessarily the internet, but your mind: today you think downloading off Napster is fun, life-enriching, and moral (it is, in fact, not immoral); tomorrow you think it's selfish, short-sighted (as it kills Hollywood as we know it), and immoral.
Sure, Kevin. I'm a 42-year-old guy with a degree in engineering, but who happens to find all this breakneck-paced technological development fascinating; I guess it suits my temperament. In that my daughter is going into the field (genetic counseling, which apparently combines the disciplines of genetic and ethics; she wants to help people make decisions in light of the advances available to them via genetics / proteomics et al). I find it incredibly fascinating (I think I mentioned that) because the ramifications of all this knowledge - what being able to do with it means to us as a culture and a society - are far-reaching. You yourself are going into the field of medical science and there are profound ethical questions you will wrestle with. I determined early on that I needed harder science, but found that my dilemmas were no less difficult. The arena of global thermonuclear warfare can be tricky as well.
It is good that you agree that public discourse on the subject is not only valid, but vital. I grew up believing in the ideal of the pure scientist, one for whom questions of ethics didn't really exist because his motives were purely driven by his inquisitive nature. In this day and age, unfortunately, that isn't the case. One can never be sure of an individual's trustworthiness; in fact it is the danger in this technology being delivered into the wrong hands that is often a big argument for continuing research wherever it might lead, so that we might be able to combat the "Dr. Evils' of the future world when they discover the technology independently*. This was also the argument in the 1950's for continuing research on atomic weapons. I don't have to tell you where that led: Plutonium Injections, the 'Green Run', and all sorts of environmental clean-up issues that persist today.
I don't know how to stop the incredible hubris of people, now that pure scientists don't exist so much anymore, or if they do, are overshadowed by greedy and evil men, or utter fools. But I can set them all up for one massive 'told ya so'!
What I meant about those questions should not need to be raised: hypothetically, sure, but perhaps not in real life. My kids have a cousin who was born to two Moms... so far, so good. Oh! That made me think of a fleeting thought I had about an hour ago. Such births to me (sorry if I offend) are not about loving a child, they are about people having a child for themselves. I actually do consider such acts selfish ones. Creation of a child out of Love comes only from God. There goes the Luddite side of me again. I sincerely do not get all excited about the possiblities of cloning. Genetics, sure, but not cloning. I am not a religious man, but I like to think I know God a little, and I am pretty sure that the job of creating life is still best left to Him. We are bound to cock it up!
BTW, you will almost Never see me comment on Linux issues or servers, although I read the posts. Programming in perl will have to be done in a future life. heh, maybe my clone will pick up on it...
One more personal note: you should not post as an AC, you have too much to offer this forum, and unless astute moderators pick up on your posts and elevate them, we might never get to see them.
*- and the fact that, as it turns out, cloning is not much more difficult than IV fertilization makes it especially dangerous. Very few people today can build a back-yard H-bomb.
I respectfully disagree with your condescending statement that, in essence, someone without knowledge of a field may not comment on it. While I agree that scientific study often goes far afield of one person's ability to understand all of what goes on in a given esoteric specialized field, the fact that one may have an opinion on the ramifications of the research needs to be respected. In fact, scientists often lose perspective completely in their zeal to continue their research. In a field I know a little more about, recall that it was Einstein who wrote the letter to (Truman?) warning him of the dangers of nuclear research. Contrast him with Edmund Teller who scoffed at the concerned scientists and pushed hard for the "Super" as he called it (the H-Bomb). Some scientists are moral and some lose their heads, it's as simple as that, but for a person of average intelligence to be disqualified in commenting on, say, the above story is to allow for the possibility that the debate about the chickens becomes limited exclusively to wolves. I agree that there will always be uninformed opinions, but I would prefer to ignore them and go on with the discussion rather than shouting them down and humiliating them so as to teach others a lesson.
Thank you for clarifying those important points about cancer and the Adenine string, I suspected it was a little off, however interesting.
Anyway, cloning is not the END of the world, as neither are kudzu, killer bees, and love bugs. It is a powerful technology that has a great inherent danger, and it may very well lead to the end of the world as we know it. Already we are contemplating a world in which eating meat becomes somewhat rare, as a direct result of things such as cows eating their ancestors' brains (a genetically-related disease if I am not mistaken). Scientists are aware of these but it doesn't necessarily stop them. How are we (as uninformed script kiddies) to reconcile Wired magazine's recent cover article "You Again: A Human will be Cloned this Year" with the abovementioned article?
You sound like an informed source. What are your thoughts on the ethics of cloning in light of the current state of the art? It's more than just being able to stick a nanometer pipette into a nucleus. I agree that research should probably continue, but even though I am pro-choice, I shudder at the thought of creating cloned human life for any reason. Many are sanguine, including Matt Ridley. We experienced this sort of moral dilemma when we were able to make test tube babies, it is true (through a process much like cloning), and it is also true that we are all pretty much okay with that now. But with all the litigation about parental custody over frozen embryos and sperm today, with lesbian couples having children without the benefit of a father, you can't tell me it doesn't pose real and critical moral dilemmas.
Now we're going to get men who want to have their wife back at any price after she died in a car accident so he creates a girl out of his wife's DNA. Think about it - and very much in the Frankenstein sense, in the soliloquy where he confronts his creator on top of the mountain (highly recommended passage BTW, if not the whole book) - what Right did the good Doctor have to create the monster? And what claim does the man have over his daughter, er, baby wife, er, whatever he had created?
Some questions should not ever need to raised, do you agree?
Good Post. I read in Matt Ridley's book "Genome" about this and was fascinated by it. So I guess what you are saying is that it's like a zipper that doesn't zip all the way down, getting shorter with each replication. So using adult cells means that the DNA is already sonewhat burned down and thus will yield for a shorter-lived being. I didn't think that the end was strictly "A"s but some innocuous sequence.
Now back to the topic: inasmuch as scientists are finding that they cannot completely duplicate the entire genomic sequence for a single creature, doesn't this mean that unless they have a way to accurately determine that the DNA matches exactly that of the adult, then they cannot legally, ethically, or morally proceed to clone humans (and PETA soon will speak up on the creation of animal monsters, I imagine)? Forgive my use of the perjorative 'monsters', but it is exactly how I see it. In this month's Wired we see the battles between an artist and a biotech firm over a glowing rabbit - a rabbit whose genes were spliced with (or somehow infused with) fluorescing bacteria. IMHO the genetic scientists have already crossed moral barriers in their research, but I suppose there is little we can do simply because corporations Want this technology. In the meantime we have recalls on genetically-modified corn (star-link?) in Trader Joe's food stores here, but corps are fighting for their FrankenFoods...
*sigh* Coming from Florida as I do, I know of the dangers of scientists' (and corps) meddling with nature. We have kudzu, supposed to be a boon for feeding goats, but instead a rampant consumer of everything in its path ("you have to close your windows at night to keep it out of your house"); we have love bugs, which were bred for noble reasons, I'm sure; and we have recently, in the University of Florida, seen African Trout, imported to help process wastewater streams, take over the habitats of all other fish. In California we have mustard plants, and of course everyone knows the story of killer bees.
Not to stray too far off-topic, but it seems to me that we are headed for monstrous problems of biblical proportions, revealing the real lesson behind the parable of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Mankind cannot be trusted with this information, because he can't help himself, even though he call himself a responsible scientist. Books are filled with the folly of arrogance, from Frankenstein (and don't tell me that it doesn't fit here) to Robin Cook's Acceptable Risk.
..and I'm serious when I say this: "God help us all." Wow, I've become a Luddite in five minutes.
Quick post without reading, as I read it in this mornings paper...
To me, it seems to underline the Advantage advertisers have that essentially corrupts the free discourse of information between netizens. I argued this with 'loyal opposition' co-workers today. My point: this represents (and you gotta read the article to understand how sleazy this tactic really is) a total rip-off of people's creativity in a deceptful marketing scheme by the big corporations. On Charlie Rose last night, Michael Eisner claimed that the service he provided (he is an ardent hands-on-the-creative-process man) was the aggregate of directors, writers, actors, etc, and that if people on the internet were allowed to trade movies unchecked they would destroy that gathering of talent. "There would be talent, but it would be [dissonant crap]." But if Disney were to imitate Joe Blow's fan website, aren't they denying the creative capacity inherent in all those marketeers?
But the net result of this is a further reduction in the credibility of websites. There is a reason that magazines put the word "Advertisement" on top and bottom of those ads that read like articles. They want to retain credibility. So if this continues, the internet, already a place of dubious ancestry, will suffer a little more as people will have to decide further (just like in their spam mail) whether to believe the source or not.
I think this degrades the value of the entire internet experience. But then again, I don't visit movie fan sites much.
More to the point. Big business wants to have its cake and eat it, too. You can't link to their site, or comment on their 'content', but they can spend big bux and totally copy your fan site and prey on all your potential visitors.
If you've ever seen some of the interpretations of some of those PI guys, you would be amazed. The level of incredulousness is, well, incredulous.
"See this thing here? That's an underground base. You can tell by the indentation... here... which is a vent..."
It's all you can do to stop from saying "Give me a frikkin' break here! You guys are totally making this stuff up!"
But they have years of PI experience and seem pretty confident in what they do. It's like having your doctor go over your x-rays with you. You're looking at white patterns on a black background. But they can see things you never thought possible.
It is a good testament to the power of the human mind. I bet no computer AI could ever gain the insight the human mind can in these fields. Remember the sonar guy in (the BOOK) "Hunt for Red October"? How he could hear a whale fart from 100 miles and tell you shich kind of whale and what he had for breakfast? heh, that kind of thing...
The simple economic fact is: You will put more energy into creating the hydrogen fuel than you can ever get out of it since 1) entropy rules all energy transactions, and 2) the efficiency of a fuel-burning combustion engine is ultimately limited by the Carnot efficiency of the engine, which states that you can only get the working fluid to expand from its previous state by the ol' PV~T rule. Therefore it will be at least as expensive as that many joules of electricity, which is that many tons of coal, air, or wherever the hydrogen plant gets it from.
The only reason that drilling for oil is cost-effective is that there is more energy contained in the product than it takes to get it out. Obviously. The same for coal, natural gas, and even wind turbine energy, etc... Once the return on investment slips to a lower level than is profitable, the energy companies stop mining it.
How is this supposed to be different with hydrogen? Can someone with a calculator please tell me how much a mile of hydrogen will cost in terms of kW-hours of electricity? I suspect that it can't be more effective than the ol' 13.6 joules it stores and releases...
When I took Direct Energy Conversion in college we talked about hydrogen, but only in terms of electric fuel cells, i.e., battery-powered vehicles. This is because the specific-energy stored in a cell (energy per unit weight) was much higher than lead-acid batteries (you need a trunk full of Pb batteries, and then your pickup and go suffers terribly due to all the weight).
But, remember that it is never a question of 'creating energy', only moving it around, and entropy is there at every step, robbing the transaction of precious joules. So, it is really a case here of plug-in cars, just like the flywheel concept and the battery-driven vehicles.
But perhaps Dean Kamen can help us gain economic feasibility of hydrogen where all but the Kaiser failed? Why are we not talking a little more about that, anyway? That is fascinating stuff, IMO...
Sometimes one has to stand for what they believe in, and have courage not to shrink from evil, wherever it may be.
One must not live in fear. Thank you for adding to the general sense of anxiety we all have about our fellow man.
I encourage my fellow citizens to join together in the face of evil. If this be the time, it will be the adversary that brings us all together, for we never need to band in good times, only bad.
Recall the words of the general in Tora!Tora!Tora! (maybe in real life, too!)...
"I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with terrible resolve."
Well, I hate to point out the obvious, but at this point the trolls have a wonderful way of keeping slashdot admins busy. Instead of writing goatse.cx trolls, just paste in bits and pieces of L.Ron Hubbard's idiotic stories. What better way to DDOS slashdot than with lawyers?
I would hope that at least the administrators would have to be notified of a particular post first before they were required to delete the post. It should not be the job of admins to censor their own free forum, but the responsibility of those offended to speak up and ask that each and every offense be retracted.
That is, if we live in a sane society.
In any case, I hope that CoS would have reason to fear the awesome power of a million pissed-off nerds as much as/. fears the power of a million evil sychophants. Can we get John Travolta's thetans to speak up on this please? From what I have learned about this cult today, I am frankly a little worried that it be allowed to remain a bona fide religion enjoying tax-free status and governmental protections.
Shouldn't a religion be exempt from copyright protections for reasons such as this very example?
Not that this post will ever get read, being one among THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS, but perhaps someone will read it (hopefully not a clam, tho, would hate to have that bunch on my tail...)
Re: Movie Preaching - Traffic Spoiler WARNING
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Hi, Two Words...
One of the bigger parts of that movie that had great emotional impact but small factual basis was the fact that the daughter of the drug czar went from valedictorian to crack whore in a matter of days. Strong impact, but how far is that from 'Reefer Madness'? (this has been said before)
As for the story of the corrupt general, and the responsible drug-dealer father/husband, the avenging but innocent wife who arranges the murder of the snitch, the good-hearted Mexican cop who bargains with the Machiavellian Gringos for a new baseball field 'for the children', c'mon, really.
Either these things did actually happen in which case a documentary that presented these facts in an unbiased light would have had incredible impact on us, or...
...they were all made up and as such are a fiction in which case the message of the movie is "here's how the drug problem Could be... albeit on another planet."
Don't get me wrong: Interesting story. Bad parables. Fun watching. Please don't take a whole lot of this to heart. Don't say "My God! Can't we stop this madness? Look, young mothers are being forced to arrange hits on cons due to this terrible terrible drug war!"
It has nothing to do with reality unless you can show me the drug czar's daughter, the Beverly Hills dealer and his savvy wife, the general who's death was faked.
See, no one has to take responsibility here. If it's 'just a story' in part A, it can't be 'deep, insightful truth' in part B, 'cuz we can't tell which is which.
Write back and tell me if this made sense to you. Hope so.
Slashdot Mirror
...okay, guys, I know I am asking for it. But here is what I just posted in 'that other place'... You'll notice that I pose no solutions, but I do believe that I have a valid rationale for keeping this sort of tripe away from the children. I skimmed through most of the other posts and didn't see anything along these lines, so here it is. I will respond to one post that seemed to say that parents need to be more responsible in raising their kids in this environment: parents cannot raise their children effectively in the current environment. There's just too many influences, and IMHO, too many Evil influences. Read on to get a feel for my viewpoint, and then feel free to respond! These are my thoughts after long deliberation, so please do me a favor and give me due consideration. Don't dis me. And try not to flame me as an AC; you're abusing the system and I won't respond. *sigh* that said, here goes:
.45 caliber pistol is posed oh-so-close to a pair of ruby-red lips), they opened up a door to something that ultimately had to lead (like the frog in the pan of water on the stove, slowly until it's boiling) to what we have today. And you know what? It shocks you, it turns your head, and it even stimulates you (that is, until you are numb). But it is guaranteed to Never fulfill you. In fact, it is guaranteed to frustrate you and provoke your anxiety.
:)
After reading the passages in the FCC document (highly entertaining!), can anyone really defend their airing on the public airwaves? Those of us who are old enough to appreciate the content can obtain it readily from other sources, and I maintain that it is in the best interests of our society that we protect the children (do it for the little children!!! Of course, who else do we do these things for?) from being exposed to this information. Ironically, the same moralists are the ones who applauded the release of the Starr Report in our local newspaper. The Ends do not justify the Means, but apparently they do for Them.
Now as to my reasoning as to why this information is harmful. I am against most of the methods employed by the Christian Right, as I believe they
are neither Christian nor Right, but I had to figure out for myself what constituted the reasoning behind the Laws of God, if only to figure out my own morality. What I came up with is this: the brand of Love that is portrayed to children between mutually consenting adults is important to their understanding of what is Right and Wrong. I think that a perfectly idealized love* is almost non-sexual in nature. In this idealized Love of, say a Man for a Woman, he cherishes her and holds her more important than his own life. In any case, the object of his love is her soul, her essence. This sort of Love is self-renewing and always fulfilling. It is the sort of love that grows with time in a deeper intimacy and abiding trust. The heart and the soul of the lover become filled with Joy and Life takes on a meaning that transcends the ordinary day-to-day events.
In contrast, the sort of attraction a Man has for a Woman as portrayed by these shock jocks totally denies the soul of the person, and objectifies
her as mere flesh. The problem here is that the object of desire is the flesh itself, which has no soul, so there is nothing further to do once the
object has been er, conquered. This leads to immense dissatisfaction in the psyche, as one realizes that what one thinks he has been searching for is found, and then it's done. It then becomes like a drug, it's all about one's own sexual needs, not about any joining of souls, and the problem becomes one of maintaining the excitement and the impetus for continuing pursuit of this inner drive. The only way to maintain That kind of high, is, like a drug, to increase the dosage - you must next have two partners, or use vibrators, whips, chains, multiple partners. You cheat, you tomcat around, you pay money for it. It is very much like the current climate in radio. Once advertisers learned that titillation turns heads (walk through any video store and count the number of times a big ol'
But that of course is the nature of evil, to consume your soul. You learn that the hard way at your own peril.
So we as a society should continue to punish those who, in their own misguided notion of fun and need to create an allegience among our youth, would teach them to be titillated by such porn. Because there is a much more important way to Love. Because our Children need to learn that first. This will save them when they are exposed to the various genitalia flouted at them over the course of their lives.
Yes. Do it... for the children.
(*- By the way. In a perfectly idealized love? The sex is Great!)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that most modern fighters are built aerodynamically marginally- (or downright Un-) stable and that it is Only computers that keep them in the air. I am sure I read that about the Grumman X-29, a forward-swept wing configuration. From the quoted text: The particular forward swept wing, close-coupled canard design used on the X-29 was unstable. The X-29's flight control system compensated for this instability by sensing flight conditions such as attitude and speed, and through computer processing, continually adjusted the control surfaces with up to 40 commands each second.
So it's not just the Osprey... but you're right, that sort of versatility is really asking for trouble, and I bet there are all sorts of marginally stable yet allowable transition states.
So what is it with those French programmers, anyway? :)
When I was working on the Systems Requirements for the EELV program, I recall that the Ariane 5 struck us all with a horrific sense of dread. This dread comes about when you realize that, no matter how hard you try, you cannot simulate all conditions that software must function in and all situations that it must respond to. The SRS (Software Requirements Specification) tries to cover all the bases, but while you can specify environments for hardware (temperature, humidity, acceleration, vibration, etc...), you cannot often provide a spec for all that might happen to software. In the Ariane 5 case, they changed the hardware; I believe that they upgraded to a new main booster whose horizontal velocity capability exceeded that of the previous booster, but they decided to re-use the software from the old one. When the rocket started going sideways, the value exceeded the bounds and the s/w crashed. Ahhh, here.
I am writing this for a reason: Engineers and software developers often scoff at requirements, preferring to design rather than focus on What they are Designing To. Without a proper SRS, you really don't know if you've covered all bases. Even with one you don't.
But this stuff ain't web pages, man, it's Serious Stuff! And a big portion of the budget needs to go into Requirements Development, at least 25% (actually I once read that the Japanese put 40% into up-front requirements and conceptualization, thus eating our lunch in the automotive industry).
What you don't spend in up-front requirements development you spend in test and verification. What you don't spend in either, well, you spend that in environmental clean-up, insurance costs, and lives.
Sounds like the Osprey folks should have paid a little more attention to their SRA (Systems Requirements Analysis).
Incidentally, while I Understand the massive cost savings (up front!) available through Object Oriented Systems Analysis (emphasis on reuse!), remember that there are no easy shortcuts, and be aware of the dangers inherent in cutting and pasting!
This is an important point. I am beginning to believe that B2B is a bastardization of the P2P concept in that the First-Class citizens retain their preemininence, and the 'fringe users' stay on the fringe. Napster (the only successful example of P2P yet, IMO) changed the way we all looked at our computer. Suddenly we had a reason to leave the comp on all night, and it enriched our lives without costing a cent. Obviously the corporations could not have this and had to quash Napster immediately.
In my opinion, there is a war going on between people and corporations over the use and rights inherent in the Internet. People have no clout to stop the corps from doing whatever they want with the net (except for thousands and thousand of posts, which sometimes actually works), but corps with their gaggle of lawyers are quick and eager to point out and punish those who take the net and use it in innovative, if costly ways.
What started out as 1) a wonderful system of free information dissemination has devolved into either 2a) a way to harness each and every transaction into a money-making proposition, or 2b) a way to get really really neat stuff for free.
Of course, it will end up as neither, and the only people once again, who will realize the full potential of the net will be lawyers, as the net becomes the equivalent of modern television. I hope I'm wrong, but P2P may be reduced to nothing because there is no money to be made without that broker between every txn...
Here's something interesting. Did you know that you can defrost a can of Orange Juice in a microwave without taking the bottom (metal) lid off? I was told that metal should Never be put in a microwave, but there ya have it, folks. You can put metal in the mw, but I guess it has to lie low to avoid the rays??? I dunno, but it works.
I'm not so sure about this claim, and find it interesting that there is no corroborating evidence elsewhere on the net (I tried, believe me). If this isn't "Cold Fusion II", then Sheldon Schultz has some explaining to do. Why is this not published in the Scientific American?
I suspect we will read about it in the paper tomorrow, and there will be an Entertainment Tonight feature on it later in the week. What ever happened to responsible journalism and scientific inquiry?
Hype alone will not change the laws of Physics. Although it is true that light will bend according to the refractive index, it is the angle itseld that determines the index of Refraction, if I recall correctly. Therefore, light will bend one way when going from air into glass, and another when going from air into a vacuum. So which way does light go here? If it goes from a vacuum into the medium in the same way it would go from air into a vacuum (or glass into air, i.e., from a higher to a lower medium), then, okay, you have something there. But why doesn't the article bother explaining the phenomena?
It reminds me of that article wherein they claimed that they found something that travels faster than the speed of light. I am still somewhat dubious on that, since it is only infomation that has passed out of that medium faster than a light beam would have traversed the medium, but not the initial pulse: that was absorbed, I believe.
Of course, I am just one guy. I could be wrong here. But not about the dearth of explanation...
About the "next big thing". It seems to me that in the era we are in of over-hyping everything, that you cannot tell which will be the next big thing until the people actually adopt it. It must transcend its own hype, in other words. Neither you, me, nor Katz can make something happen just by stating it.
Hopefully the Free distribution of information will someday make hype (and stories like this one, which seems merely to jump on the hype bandwagon) a thing of the past. No longer will marketeers (CueCat comes to mind) be able to snow us with their claims and blue-sky talk. The proof will finally be in the pudding. Napster proved that.
Dude, this isn't SPAM. Spam is when one guy sends out a million emails.
When a million pissed-off citizens send emails to one company, it simply isn't Spam. It is a call to attention. It is a show of force, ideally.
So, I am going to join in the throng. I think I'll just write 'you guys suck!'
Yeah, that'll make me feel better...
here goes {clikcliktypetype}
Ahhhhhh........
Now, I wonder if they'll contact me.
Oh, guy, excuse me, but what does "firm (but polite) disapproval" mean, anyway... If I sit here and give a Real Mean Church Lady look at their webpage, do you think it will get a better reaction from them?
I prefer the million emails myself... okay, okay, 500 emails in reality prolly. But I hope at least they know we are Still Out There, and we are Still Watching!
I notice that the generation behind me is generally less social than I remember us being, even among their peers, which probably is a bad thing. Isolation tends to increase anxiety about one's self and one's role in the local society. It is probably a downward spiral: isolation begets anxiety begets more isolation...
The other thing I would mention to you:
Have you ever sought isolation by packing your backpack with enough to live for a few days, grabbing your dog and taking off for the desert/mountain/whatever wilderness, all by yourself? When you do this, you realize just how godawful stark the existence of the primitive societies was. And you also recover your bodies' natural rhythms. You go to sleep at 7pm and you wake up at 6am. And then you spend an hour preparing and eating food. And then you watch the sun as it crawls across the sky. And you go a little crazy because you can't check your email, or watch a movie, or play a video game. It is a remarkable experience for our generation!
I recommend you take a girlfriend along, too... there are other natural rhythms you may find you have forgotten...
I think that is exactly what I am saying about 'connectedness'. A child is saved when one (it only takes one!) of these elements succeeds in giving the child a feeling that he lives in a caring world. I probably forgot one or two more elements. One of these is clearly the Church that has totally failed to 1) enlighten people of the true message of what All (valid) Religions are trying to say about human nature, and 2) provide a strong enough sense of a moral code to those so-called Adherents of the Creed to keep them from becoming morally corrupt.
:)
As far as giving a child what he needs, I sometimes wonder that a television that operated in a truly enlightened sense couldn't... nahhh, strike that... TV is the wrong medium all around.
I recall when I had my darkest moments in my life, however, and felt alone and unwanted and uncared for, that it was God As I Knew Him who saved me. Who knows what I might have done if there was instead Satan leering and laughing at me (in whatever guise), and a Peacemaker lying on the table next to me?
Instead, thank God, I had the peace of my circle of friends and Pink Floyd on the turntable... Connected, Yes!
Yes, thank you for that analysis.
It was kind of a two-sided statement. On the one hand I would be criticizing the NRA/Christian Right for being stubborn / untrusting, but I was also careful to criticize the Left for name-calling.
I could have also written "Not that gun control advocates aren't nazis, but that they are too unrealistic. Not that teachers' unions aren't self-interested socialists, but that calling them names doesn't allow them to trust the administration enough to concede their culpability." Then I would have gotten letters from other people.
At some point there will be a crisis real enough that we see the need to stop pointing fingers and come to love our children as parents, educators, law enforcement and entertainers alike. To me it's like being a toxic polluter: maybe if his child developed respiratory problems due to the sludge he put into his own drinking water, he would stop polluting because it was wrong, the bottom line be damned.
No matter what Hillary says, that phrase is important because it points closer to what it is that allows for the evil suggestion of a student's Final Solution to enter his brain and seem like the Only Solution.
:)
Stay with me here, I think I have part of the answer, and a damn sight bigger part than a politician would dare try to tackle.
The "village" in this instance is the environment of the kid; this includes parents, school authorities, his peers and friends, TV, video games and computer games. From this village he forms his opinion of the world and obtains a sense of 'connectedness'. 'Connectedness' in this sense represents his relationship with his village: i.e., he gets what he needs from his environment and in return he is responsible for contributing his part to the environment ('he' is generic here, okay ladies?); he feels connected to it, a part of it.
But our village is burnt out.
The parents have skewed values and pursue money at the expense of time with their children. The child is latch-key and unsupervised and unloved in a real sense.
The school environment is composed of overworked and burnt-out teachers: sure they Could care, but who Cares if they Care? So none of them connect with the troubled teen in a realistic manner. And the teen feels inadequate to approach them for help; it certainly isn't encouraged in this day and age. Teachers are Not Parents, but they play them in the classroom.
And now for the Active elements in the Boy's young life! TV actively plays teens against their parents, portraying them as the enemy and corrupt and evil. Kids buy into this because they want power and ally themselves with a 'villager' who appears to be their ally. But it isn't their ally; it is their 'wormtongue', placing messages of destruction into the child's mind. No one would argue that TV is a poor parent for a child. TV actively increases the level of anxiety in the teen's mind... I could go on and on about this, but I think we all agree its fairly evident.
Finally, and in league with the media, is the interactive world, the electronic world of messages that play into the natural tendencies of a child's aggression. He doesn't roughhouse with Dad, he doesn't play capture the flag with his friends, he isn't wrestling in the gym. No, he is sitting in front of a screen blowing the bejeezus out of a bunch of frightening images, getting a subtle (not so subtle?) rush of adrenaline (adrenaline, the drug of choice for Americans, bar none) in doing so. And, as Ashcroft correctly if misguidedly asserts, learning how to kill.
Finally, add the complete humiliation day in and day out of his peers, the final element of his village, taunting and ridiculing him freely and
without supervision. Nothing will stop this daily terror.
Oh no, add one more thing.
Give him a gun.
Therein lies the recipe for these disasters. And when you add the sensationalism and copycat solicitation provided by the media, you really shouldn't be surprised in the monsters you have created.
It takes a village, alright. A village of village idiots.
Last thing. All you single-cause zealots who use these tragedies to foster your cause are doing nothing to help. You add heat but little light to the discussion. Banning guns would help but it ain't gonna happen. The Ten Commandments in school halls would remind us all who is really in charge here (White Christians, not God), but would lessen the alienation of our troubled youth not one whit. Punishing Hollywood, punishing parents, laying blame on Any Single Thing is perpetuating a vicious spiral that gets us nowhere. So please, if you care to respond to any of this, keep that in mine when you do. It is a complicated problem and it might even be one that cannot be solved today or even ever. But we can't make headway if we fall back into old and tired arguments. Not that the NRA isn't an idiot, but that it is too thickheaded and stubborn. Not that Christians aren't the new Nazis, but that calling them names doesn't allow them to trust America enough to open a dialog. We need a brand new paradigm, just like the old paradigm that we once held sacred, albeit only for the landed gentry. Perhaps if we can extend it to All Men and Women and Children, the village can have meaning again for a nation of alienated and Disconnected youth.
(Reprinted from a Plastic article I wrote. I only got one karma point, but a bunch of replies.
Well, it didn't seem like a puff piece or a publicity statement. But I take it merely as a statement of his attitudes. He has a lot of influence in Congress, as you probably know, and his approach is probably emblematic of current mindset in Hollywood / content industry.
Disney also seems to have a lot of loyal fans, at least in my small circle of acquaintances. I was glad that Boucher, at least wasn't gaga over Disney, or I suspect he would have said different things about copyrights.
It would be interesting to hear some of those boardroom discussions...
I really don't think it's the worst thing either, and compared to STRIKING THROUGH THE WORLD SERIES it isn't much of an inconvenience.
If you didn't understand that baseball is All About Money Then - the only previous time a WS wasn't held was during WWII - and fans be damned because we are such loyal saps that they can do anything to them and we'll always come back, then you never will.
BTW, don't you think this will fall flat on it's e-face? Does anybody have any figures on how the NBA revenue is faring?
Michael Eisner was on Charlie Rose the other night and he talked about the extent to which he wanted control over the medium. Addressing the Napster issue, he said that he wanted all people to think of stealing content from providers as the equivalent of stealing an apple from an applecart. He allowed that 10% will still pirate stuff over the internet but "there's always that 10% in anything", and he alluded that he could live with that. What he didn't want was Joe Sixpack thinking it was 'cool' to download stuff for free.
My point and how it relates to your post: Eisner is seeking not Draconian controls on the Internet to catch people, but rather a closed-market system that protects the content providers' interests so that they will remain content providers. He sees piracy as threatening the viability of movie studios.
So what he really wants to control is not necessarily the internet, but your mind: today you think downloading off Napster is fun, life-enriching, and moral (it is, in fact, not immoral); tomorrow you think it's selfish, short-sighted (as it kills Hollywood as we know it), and immoral.
What made you change your mind? Eisner's will!
Sure, Kevin. I'm a 42-year-old guy with a degree in engineering, but who happens to find all this breakneck-paced technological development fascinating; I guess it suits my temperament. In that my daughter is going into the field (genetic counseling, which apparently combines the disciplines of genetic and ethics; she wants to help people make decisions in light of the advances available to them via genetics / proteomics et al). I find it incredibly fascinating (I think I mentioned that) because the ramifications of all this knowledge - what being able to do with it means to us as a culture and a society - are far-reaching. You yourself are going into the field of medical science and there are profound ethical questions you will wrestle with. I determined early on that I needed harder science, but found that my dilemmas were no less difficult. The arena of global thermonuclear warfare can be tricky as well.
It is good that you agree that public discourse on the subject is not only valid, but vital. I grew up believing in the ideal of the pure scientist, one for whom questions of ethics didn't really exist because his motives were purely driven by his inquisitive nature. In this day and age, unfortunately, that isn't the case. One can never be sure of an individual's trustworthiness; in fact it is the danger in this technology being delivered into the wrong hands that is often a big argument for continuing research wherever it might lead, so that we might be able to combat the "Dr. Evils' of the future world when they discover the technology independently*. This was also the argument in the 1950's for continuing research on atomic weapons. I don't have to tell you where that led: Plutonium Injections, the 'Green Run', and all sorts of environmental clean-up issues that persist today.
I don't know how to stop the incredible hubris of people, now that pure scientists don't exist so much anymore, or if they do, are overshadowed by greedy and evil men, or utter fools. But I can set them all up for one massive 'told ya so'!
What I meant about those questions should not need to be raised: hypothetically, sure, but perhaps not in real life. My kids have a cousin who was born to two Moms... so far, so good. Oh! That made me think of a fleeting thought I had about an hour ago. Such births to me (sorry if I offend) are not about loving a child, they are about people having a child for themselves. I actually do consider such acts selfish ones. Creation of a child out of Love comes only from God. There goes the Luddite side of me again. I sincerely do not get all excited about the possiblities of cloning. Genetics, sure, but not cloning. I am not a religious man, but I like to think I know God a little, and I am pretty sure that the job of creating life is still best left to Him. We are bound to cock it up!
BTW, you will almost Never see me comment on Linux issues or servers, although I read the posts. Programming in perl will have to be done in a future life. heh, maybe my clone will pick up on it...
One more personal note: you should not post as an AC, you have too much to offer this forum, and unless astute moderators pick up on your posts and elevate them, we might never get to see them.
*- and the fact that, as it turns out, cloning is not much more difficult than IV fertilization makes it especially dangerous. Very few people today can build a back-yard H-bomb.
I respectfully disagree with your condescending statement that, in essence, someone without knowledge of a field may not comment on it. While I agree that scientific study often goes far afield of one person's ability to understand all of what goes on in a given esoteric specialized field, the fact that one may have an opinion on the ramifications of the research needs to be respected. In fact, scientists often lose perspective completely in their zeal to continue their research. In a field I know a little more about, recall that it was Einstein who wrote the letter to (Truman?) warning him of the dangers of nuclear research. Contrast him with Edmund Teller who scoffed at the concerned scientists and pushed hard for the "Super" as he called it (the H-Bomb). Some scientists are moral and some lose their heads, it's as simple as that, but for a person of average intelligence to be disqualified in commenting on, say, the above story is to allow for the possibility that the debate about the chickens becomes limited exclusively to wolves. I agree that there will always be uninformed opinions, but I would prefer to ignore them and go on with the discussion rather than shouting them down and humiliating them so as to teach others a lesson.
Thank you for clarifying those important points about cancer and the Adenine string, I suspected it was a little off, however interesting.
Anyway, cloning is not the END of the world, as neither are kudzu, killer bees, and love bugs. It is a powerful technology that has a great inherent danger, and it may very well lead to the end of the world as we know it. Already we are contemplating a world in which eating meat becomes somewhat rare, as a direct result of things such as cows eating their ancestors' brains (a genetically-related disease if I am not mistaken). Scientists are aware of these but it doesn't necessarily stop them. How are we (as uninformed script kiddies) to reconcile Wired magazine's recent cover article "You Again: A Human will be Cloned this Year" with the abovementioned article?
You sound like an informed source. What are your thoughts on the ethics of cloning in light of the current state of the art? It's more than just being able to stick a nanometer pipette into a nucleus. I agree that research should probably continue, but even though I am pro-choice, I shudder at the thought of creating cloned human life for any reason. Many are sanguine, including Matt Ridley. We experienced this sort of moral dilemma when we were able to make test tube babies, it is true (through a process much like cloning), and it is also true that we are all pretty much okay with that now. But with all the litigation about parental custody over frozen embryos and sperm today, with lesbian couples having children without the benefit of a father, you can't tell me it doesn't pose real and critical moral dilemmas.
Now we're going to get men who want to have their wife back at any price after she died in a car accident so he creates a girl out of his wife's DNA. Think about it - and very much in the Frankenstein sense, in the soliloquy where he confronts his creator on top of the mountain (highly recommended passage BTW, if not the whole book) - what Right did the good Doctor have to create the monster? And what claim does the man have over his daughter, er, baby wife, er, whatever he had created?
Some questions should not ever need to raised, do you agree?
Good Post. I read in Matt Ridley's book "Genome" about this and was fascinated by it. So I guess what you are saying is that it's like a zipper that doesn't zip all the way down, getting shorter with each replication. So using adult cells means that the DNA is already sonewhat burned down and thus will yield for a shorter-lived being. I didn't think that the end was strictly "A"s but some innocuous sequence.
Now back to the topic: inasmuch as scientists are finding that they cannot completely duplicate the entire genomic sequence for a single creature, doesn't this mean that unless they have a way to accurately determine that the DNA matches exactly that of the adult, then they cannot legally, ethically, or morally proceed to clone humans (and PETA soon will speak up on the creation of animal monsters, I imagine)? Forgive my use of the perjorative 'monsters', but it is exactly how I see it. In this month's Wired we see the battles between an artist and a biotech firm over a glowing rabbit - a rabbit whose genes were spliced with (or somehow infused with) fluorescing bacteria. IMHO the genetic scientists have already crossed moral barriers in their research, but I suppose there is little we can do simply because corporations Want this technology. In the meantime we have recalls on genetically-modified corn (star-link?) in Trader Joe's food stores here, but corps are fighting for their FrankenFoods...
*sigh* Coming from Florida as I do, I know of the dangers of scientists' (and corps) meddling with nature. We have kudzu, supposed to be a boon for feeding goats, but instead a rampant consumer of everything in its path ("you have to close your windows at night to keep it out of your house"); we have love bugs, which were bred for noble reasons, I'm sure; and we have recently, in the University of Florida, seen African Trout, imported to help process wastewater streams, take over the habitats of all other fish. In California we have mustard plants, and of course everyone knows the story of killer bees.
Not to stray too far off-topic, but it seems to me that we are headed for monstrous problems of biblical proportions, revealing the real lesson behind the parable of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Mankind cannot be trusted with this information, because he can't help himself, even though he call himself a responsible scientist. Books are filled with the folly of arrogance, from Frankenstein (and don't tell me that it doesn't fit here) to Robin Cook's Acceptable Risk.
..and I'm serious when I say this: "God help us all." Wow, I've become a Luddite in five minutes.
Quick post without reading, as I read it in this mornings paper...
To me, it seems to underline the Advantage advertisers have that essentially corrupts the free discourse of information between netizens. I argued this with 'loyal opposition' co-workers today. My point: this represents (and you gotta read the article to understand how sleazy this tactic really is) a total rip-off of people's creativity in a deceptful marketing scheme by the big corporations. On Charlie Rose last night, Michael Eisner claimed that the service he provided (he is an ardent hands-on-the-creative-process man) was the aggregate of directors, writers, actors, etc, and that if people on the internet were allowed to trade movies unchecked they would destroy that gathering of talent. "There would be talent, but it would be [dissonant crap]." But if Disney were to imitate Joe Blow's fan website, aren't they denying the creative capacity inherent in all those marketeers?
But the net result of this is a further reduction in the credibility of websites. There is a reason that magazines put the word "Advertisement" on top and bottom of those ads that read like articles. They want to retain credibility. So if this continues, the internet, already a place of dubious ancestry, will suffer a little more as people will have to decide further (just like in their spam mail) whether to believe the source or not.
I think this degrades the value of the entire internet experience. But then again, I don't visit movie fan sites much.
More to the point. Big business wants to have its cake and eat it, too. You can't link to their site, or comment on their 'content', but they can spend big bux and totally copy your fan site and prey on all your potential visitors.
If you've ever seen some of the interpretations of some of those PI guys, you would be amazed. The level of incredulousness is, well, incredulous.
"See this thing here? That's an underground base. You can tell by the indentation... here... which is a vent..."
It's all you can do to stop from saying "Give me a frikkin' break here! You guys are totally making this stuff up!"
But they have years of PI experience and seem pretty confident in what they do. It's like having your doctor go over your x-rays with you. You're looking at white patterns on a black background. But they can see things you never thought possible.
It is a good testament to the power of the human mind. I bet no computer AI could ever gain the insight the human mind can in these fields. Remember the sonar guy in (the BOOK) "Hunt for Red October"? How he could hear a whale fart from 100 miles and tell you shich kind of whale and what he had for breakfast? heh, that kind of thing...
I wonder if those cool XBOX screenshots of the snowboarder with those sun dogs streaming off his glasses were the final straw?
The simple economic fact is: You will put more energy into creating the hydrogen fuel than you can ever get out of it since 1) entropy rules all energy transactions, and 2) the efficiency of a fuel-burning combustion engine is ultimately limited by the Carnot efficiency of the engine, which states that you can only get the working fluid to expand from its previous state by the ol' PV~T rule. Therefore it will be at least as expensive as that many joules of electricity, which is that many tons of coal, air, or wherever the hydrogen plant gets it from.
The only reason that drilling for oil is cost-effective is that there is more energy contained in the product than it takes to get it out. Obviously. The same for coal, natural gas, and even wind turbine energy, etc... Once the return on investment slips to a lower level than is profitable, the energy companies stop mining it.
How is this supposed to be different with hydrogen? Can someone with a calculator please tell me how much a mile of hydrogen will cost in terms of kW-hours of electricity? I suspect that it can't be more effective than the ol' 13.6 joules it stores and releases...
When I took Direct Energy Conversion in college we talked about hydrogen, but only in terms of electric fuel cells, i.e., battery-powered vehicles. This is because the specific-energy stored in a cell (energy per unit weight) was much higher than lead-acid batteries (you need a trunk full of Pb batteries, and then your pickup and go suffers terribly due to all the weight).
But, remember that it is never a question of 'creating energy', only moving it around, and entropy is there at every step, robbing the transaction of precious joules. So, it is really a case here of plug-in cars, just like the flywheel concept and the battery-driven vehicles.
But perhaps Dean Kamen can help us gain economic feasibility of hydrogen where all but the Kaiser failed? Why are we not talking a little more about that, anyway? That is fascinating stuff, IMO...
Sometimes one has to stand for what they believe in, and have courage not to shrink from evil, wherever it may be.
One must not live in fear. Thank you for adding to the general sense of anxiety we all have about our fellow man.
I encourage my fellow citizens to join together in the face of evil. If this be the time, it will be the adversary that brings us all together, for we never need to band in good times, only bad.
Recall the words of the general in Tora!Tora!Tora! (maybe in real life, too!)...
"I fear all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with terrible resolve."
I stand by my words, coward. Too bad you don't.
Quoted, 'cuz its got a score of 1...
/. fears the power of a million evil sychophants. Can we get John Travolta's thetans to speak up on this please? From what I have learned about this cult today, I am frankly a little worried that it be allowed to remain a bona fide religion enjoying tax-free status and governmental protections.
Well, I hate to point out the obvious, but at this point the trolls have a wonderful way of keeping slashdot admins busy. Instead of writing goatse.cx trolls, just paste in bits and pieces of L.Ron Hubbard's idiotic stories. What better way to DDOS slashdot than with lawyers?
I would hope that at least the administrators would have to be notified of a particular post first before they were required to delete the post. It should not be the job of admins to censor their own free forum, but the responsibility of those offended to speak up and ask that each and every offense be retracted.
That is, if we live in a sane society.
In any case, I hope that CoS would have reason to fear the awesome power of a million pissed-off nerds as much as
Shouldn't a religion be exempt from copyright protections for reasons such as this very example?
Not that this post will ever get read, being one among THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS, but perhaps someone will read it (hopefully not a clam, tho, would hate to have that bunch on my tail...)
Hi, Two Words...
One of the bigger parts of that movie that had great emotional impact but small factual basis was the fact that the daughter of the drug czar went from valedictorian to crack whore in a matter of days. Strong impact, but how far is that from 'Reefer Madness'? (this has been said before)
As for the story of the corrupt general, and the responsible drug-dealer father/husband, the avenging but innocent wife who arranges the murder of the snitch, the good-hearted Mexican cop who bargains with the Machiavellian Gringos for a new baseball field 'for the children', c'mon, really.
Either these things did actually happen in which case a documentary that presented these facts in an unbiased light would have had incredible impact on us, or...
...they were all made up and as such are a fiction in which case the message of the movie is "here's how the drug problem Could be... albeit on another planet."
Don't get me wrong: Interesting story. Bad parables. Fun watching. Please don't take a whole lot of this to heart. Don't say "My God! Can't we stop this madness? Look, young mothers are being forced to arrange hits on cons due to this terrible terrible drug war!"
It has nothing to do with reality unless you can show me the drug czar's daughter, the Beverly Hills dealer and his savvy wife, the general who's death was faked.
See, no one has to take responsibility here. If it's 'just a story' in part A, it can't be 'deep, insightful truth' in part B, 'cuz we can't tell which is which.
Write back and tell me if this made sense to you. Hope so.