You know... Police, Army, Navy, Air Force, NSA, CIA, FBI, NRA, bronies... If they can't secure a fuckin mall for an afternoon... What are you paying them for?
Also, WHAT "rational cautions and plausible evidence"? All the public got so far was some overdue candid insight into scheming of a mega-corporation and what it REALLY thinks about people it uses, hires and its customers.
If that's terrorism, seems to me there's a great demand for more of it.
He sees Asians doing "so well" and concludes that it must be some unfair racial advantage that is starting to backfire on them - so it is perfectly acceptable if they get deducted points for identifying as "Asian". See... It's one of those "positive racial things"... Like all blacks having big cocks, all Asian women being sexy... Or was that Latinas? Indian women? Swedish? I get confused about that topic...
Anyway... It's not suffering but a GIFT OF NATURE. Or Santa or whatever...
His cognitive dissonance is so deep in, he doesn't even realize that he's using an example of discrimination based on racial prejudice - as an example of how "well" a certain minority is doing. "They are doing so well by simply being Asian, that schools are forced to discriminate against them."
See, if you're lucky enough to be born Asian - you're automagically gonna do SO WELL in school some handicaps will simply be fair, to make you more like everyone else. I have this nagging feeling that he's also a fan of Harrison Bergeron, and that the irony of acceptable handicaps for perceived and prejudiced advantages is lost on him.
Cause apparently in his mind, it is "the system", not the people who make it, that is racist. And there are "real racism" and "imaginary racism" and "pretend anti-racism" in that "system". It's you know... like a plan. There are these rules about what is real, imaginary and pretend. Secret rules of the "system". Which pretends about using one set of rules, but is actually using another. A conspiracy, if you will.
But you gotta love that cognitive dissonance of his.
They do not, however, show any of the symptoms, for which the imaginary racism is usually blamed when failures of Blacks are discussed: they are not incarcerated disproportionally more often than others (heck, you can't even find them on the chart!) and their incomes aren't lower than those of Whites â" quite the opposite, in fact
"incarcerated disproportionally more often than others" is imaginary racism - because failures of Blacks.
When it's BLACK people who are "incarcerated disproportionally more often than others" - it is imaginary racism, cause Blacks SIMPLY ARE MORE PRONE TO CRIME. It's their failure as a race.
And can't you see that it's actually the whites who are discriminated? Just look at that median household income sorted by race - where "White Hispanics" are a part of white Americans group, and "Asians" are generalizing "Chinese", "Filipino", "Indian", "Vietnamese", "Korean", "Japanese" and "other Asians" into one group.
So, whites become poor cause Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Cubans etc. (all well below the "white" median) are bunched together with Russians and Brits, while Asians become all rich due to immigrants in the tech industry and A MUCH SMALLER SAMPLE.
White Americans are 77.7% of population. Asians are about 5%. While "African Americans" are some arbitrary subset of Black Americans (12.6%) who identify themselves as such and not actually by the particular country or region of origin - like the way others do.
The bigger the sample the closer the median is to THE AVERAGE. Whites are getting averaged out with Puerto Ricans and Iraqis, while Asians are showing a median between Indians on the top of the list (just above South Africans) and Bhutanese at the very bottom. Meanwhile, "African Americans" don't get to be counted with Algerians, South Africans, Egyptians, Sierra Leonean Americans... who are ALL ABOVE "African Americans" on the list.
So, surprise-surprise, a sample ("whites") much closer to the size of the population ends up having a median ($ 54,857) very close to the median of the population ($ 51,914). While small samples deviate significantly - Asians to the right of the population median ($68,088) due to high wages of Indians in IT, and "African Americans" end up deviating to the left of the curve ($ 35,341).
Note how the same thing happens to "Pacific Islands
You are either deliberately missing the point and arguing a metaphor - i.e. trolling; missing the point cause you lack the capacity - i.e. mental skills to tell the metaphor from the argument and both from the issue at hand; or... well... have other issues.
Either way, even my time is more valuable than that.
...from arguing a metaphor through various attempts at insults to having no clue about what you are talking (nope... that's not art) and steering off down that tangent road into the sunset of irrelevant conclusions and off topic.
Wow! You really are riding that fallacy train. I mean, you cover no true Scotsman, ignoratio elenchi, tu quoque AND you finish off with an ad hominem, per your custom. Nitwit. You know what? You should sit down on the floor when talking. That way, you won't fall down on your face as much. Cause your "arguments" don't have a leg to stand on.
I mean... It's not only that you ignore that the sentiment which led ALL crusades was religious hatred of "others". You are trying to weasel out of Catholics putting Nazis to shame cause "pope and king condemned it"? Riiiiight... Which is why the pogroms and crusades kept continuing and why Inquisition was established. Totally unexpectedly. I know, right?
And I just LOVE... no... I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVEEEEEE!!!! how you've just justified jihad and terrorist activities and every single act of war or killing EVER because... let me get that in original stupid... "don't [they] wage war either?" Beautiful! What it lacks in grarnrnar it makes up in stupid.
You know what? You should print a large sandwich sign saying "NUKE NYC!" on one side and "BOMB USA!" on the other and parade with it in front of ground zero. Followed by similar presentations at various war memorials and military bases. Please record that for posterity when you do that. There's never enough good laughs.
As I read it, it does in fact exclude the Jewish God and the Christian God, specifically because it excludes other prophets.
Nope. Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses), Isa (Jesus) and others are all prophets in Islam. Same god. Different language.
In fact, had the popes been a little less dumb and less prosecuting of all flavors of Christianity other than Catholic and inclusive of others instead of constantly starting crusades against them - Islam could have easily been absorbed into Christianity. It's no different than Mormonism or all those Evangelic flavors that would have been crusaded out had they sprouted when Islam did. Just ask Cathars. Oh... wait... you can't.
So, if I sypathize with Wall-E, what does that do to your whole argument.
Same thing mustard does. Nothing.
Sympathize ain't empathize. Also, under the assumption that you are not a dog, your sympathy or empathy just makes you human.
Which again, does nothing to the argument. Cause that is not what it is about. I'm not the one arguing that sympathy, empathy or anthropomorphizing is wrong or bad.
My argument is about human empathy OF the audience, WITH characters on the screen which are revealed in a twist to ALL be just robots - being INVALIDATED by that twist. It's Scott yelling at the audience "Your empathy is futile, silly human. There is nothing to empathize with here. You are merely anthropomorphizing a walking toaster. IT does not feel! It is programmed to appear to fell. HA-HAA! And the cake is a lie too. It's made of shit! And you thought it looked tasty and delicious! STUPID HUMANS! YOU ARE ALL STUPID!!! Oh... wait... I'm human too..."
And that is stupid as berating a rock for being a rock.
Or maybe the point was, at what point does "machines faking emotion" become "machines having emotions"?
And the answer would be "never". You stupid audience member.
If Rachel's childhood memories are all fake implants, and Decker's dreams (unicorns) and desires (matchstick man with a hard-on) are all fake implants, they are no different than Leon pretending to be human by carrying around photos (i.e. memories) or Batty memorizing "attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion". Machines imitating human actions, trying to merely survive.
Besides, it is not about "emotions". They all show plenty of fear and anger, even happiness. It's about EMPATHY.
The book is all about how humans NEED to empathize. The movie only works if audience empathizes with the characters.
IF there is humanity in those characters to empathize with - that emphasizes audience's humanity. If there isn't any humanity, if it is all fake and they are all toasters - that's not emphasizing empathy but pointing a finger at the human cognitive flaw of anthropomorphizing the machines. It's berating the audience for their human flaws. For being human. And that is stupid. Particularly coming from another human. Which makes it a bad movie with a messed up message.
A movie with human Decker has a human witnessing something much like humanity in the machines he destroys, tries to save or is saved by. The question of "at what point" is his and it is a valid one cause he, as a human, does not have that answer. He does however, being human and not a machine, have free will and the ability to choose to try and save Rachel DESPITE everything and everyone telling him it will be a futile endeavor. Not having a precise answer he makes a choice based on intuition and feelings and answers the question with "Now. At this point."
And there is no "sin" in audience feeling the same - cause we are all humans and there is nothing wrong with that. No shame. No sin. Just us. Humans. It is a better AND more positive movie with a clear message.
Same reason, Muslim invasion, started later crusades up north, against "pagans" (Prussians, Slavs, Estonians... basically non-catholics). Nitwit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
It's almost as if religious goals were then, just as they are now, a pretext for validation of religious hatred against "them" and a carte blanche for looting.
You know... them. Others. Minorities. Those who are different. Be they Jews, heretics, pagans, Muslims, black, Asian, gays, communists... Nitwit.
Besides, his eyes are shown to display the same refractive property (the red glow) as all the other replicants including the owl in Tyrell's office.
Sure, sure... That's why they just shine a flashlight into someone's eyes to see if they are a replicant.
Phew... And here I feared there'd have to use some kind of a complicated multi-hour psychobabble test about empathy, memories and baby spiders. A test, during which, a camera shines a bright red light into their eyes. A test, during which, they pull the shades down as it is too bright in the room to do the test. Which shades out the light from the Sun - which just happens to shine in the owl's ONE red glowing eye. Which is funny, and must be some kind of error in the filming, a goof if you will, cause when the owl turns around NOW IT'S THE OTHER EYE THAT IS GLOWING. And as we "know" that the red glow is actually an indicator of replicantness and NOT just the light of the Sun reflecting - it must be a goof by a well known hackfraud Ridley Scott.
But the most hilarious bit in these discussions about Deckard being a replicant is that should we accept those arguments to be true (regardless of logic or veracity) - they make BR into a shitty movie and reveal Scott to be a crappy director. And the whole thing is pushed by none other than him.
Why is that a shitty movie? Cause human Decard showing empathy for toasters (which is what replicants are after all - just a machine with a timer which tells them what to do and when) emphasizes his HUMANITY. Deckard's reluctance to return to the job, him falling for Rachel, him being afraid of Batty and then sharing in his final moment - it's all a show of his humanity. And, the audience being human, it recognizes its own humanity in his.
A toaster pretending to be reluctant (it has no feelings - it's just a preprogrammed toaster) chasing a toaster, who does not want to be a toaster and wants to be a real boy/girl, pretending to fall for a toaster who thinks it's a real girl but finds out it is only a toaster, then pretends to be afraid, pretending to understand a toaster having a pretend moment... there is EXPLICITLY nothing to relate to in such a story. Further more, it's an equivalent of a movie where the director shows the audience a man eating a juicy cake - and then tells the audience after credits that the cake is actually made of feces.
It is a movie which implies that the audience is stupid for assuming that what they are seeing is true.
Only, when that truth is empathy and humanity, Scott is actually trying to berate the audience for BEING HUMAN. Either way, he comes of as an idiot. A George Lucas without all the toys.
He has issues. His brother CLEARLY had issues as well, maybe it runs in the family. But Ridley's are more along the lines of some obsessive compulsive disorder combined with confidence issues. He keeps second guessing his own work and taking any criticism at face value and as absolute judgment of quality. Which is why so many of his movies end up with half the footage on the cutting floor.
The making of featurette of The Legend is very revealing of his flaws. It's not that he will cut up the movie cause he heard some potheads snickering in the audience - it's how he will plunge openminded into any nonsense anyone suggests. Cause it will work in his mind at the moment. "At the moment" being the operative term - as a single question later he will throw it out. Though a moment ago he was all into scrapping half the movie and starting it over with l
Only thing Nazis experiments on Jews in death camps could be good for is using them as an example of CONFIRMATION BIAS. And possibly for weeding out racists and holocaust deniers from the academia.
Actually, one of the worst things you could do TO a totalitarian government is to laugh about them.
Nope.
Totalitarian regimes rely on fear and intimidation. Both go out the window once you see that the emperor has no clothes.
Also nope.
The actual quote mentions a TYRANT. A singular ruler whose power relies heavily on personal reputation. Misapplying that to a regime at best makes you misinformed. At worst disappeared.
A totalitarian government is NOT one that NEEDS fear and intimidation to rule. It's a government that already HAS you by the balls. It does not need fear or intimidation. That's for petty dictatorships. A totalitarian government has CONTROL over rules and laws. I.e. It does not need to intimidate you into not drinking alcoholic beverages. It just makes it illegal.
So, because it is aware of its own power, it is perfectly fine with letting you get your rocks off at its expense - as it knows that all it has to do is squeeze for your laughter to become a squeal. And it also knows that if it lets you bark at it you will never get frustrated enough to bite, while it can dismiss you with a wave of a hand "proving its openness to criticism". If you do eventually bite... well, you're clearly a mad dog. Just look at all your history of constant barking.
It's totalitarian cause it already has all the power and control. It doesn't need fear nor does it fear ridicule. Only those who DO NOT have absolute power, but pretend that they do, fear laughter.
One of the worst things a Government can do is make people laugh at it.
In no particular order... war, recession, genocide, ecological disaster, government prescribed religion, concentration camps, fascism, disbanding of social services, police state...
All far worse and clearly in a different category from "make people laugh at it".
The entire article could be summed up as "How our confirmation bias made us change the rules until the results confirmed our bias."
In a second analysis, they allowed the payoffs to vary outside the order set by the Prisoner's Dilemma. Instead of unilateral defection winning the greatest reward, for example, it could be that mutual cooperation reaped the greatest payoff, the situation described by a game known as Stag Hunt. Or, mutual defection could generate the lowest possible reward, as described by the game theory model known as the Snowdrift or Hawk-Dove game.
What they found was that, again, there was an initial collapse in cooperative strategies. But, as the population continued to play and evolve, players also altered the payoffs so that they were playing a different game, either Snowdrift or Stag Hunt.
"So we see complicated dynamics when we allow the full range of payoffs to evolve," Plotkin said. "One of the interesting results is that the Prisoner's Dilemma game itself is unstable and is replaced by other games. It is as if evolution would like to avoid the dilemma altogether."
"See? When I change the rules of poker to be like blackjack, the game evolves into a game of blackjack on its own! Fascinating! It is as if evolution would like to avoid the poker altogether."
and at the most extreme end of the social structure capitalism
Capitalism is not a social system - it's an economic system. I.e. It is about making and trading THINGS. You "win" by making and having more things faster.
Socialism and communism are social AND economic systems. Being SOCIAL they are primarily about benefits of PEOPLE AND/OR SOCIETIES. You "win" by achieving a satisfied and happy society.
That's why it intuitively works for families and tribes - goals are common and simple. And why it is a bitch to work in a larger society in which many smaller groups may have conflicting and complex goals.
He is also one of the two people who came up with the idea for the movie.
The premise for Interstellar was conceived by film producer Lynda Obst and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who collaborated on the 1997 film Contact and had known each other since Carl Sagan once set them up on a blind date.[8][9] Based on Thorne's work, the two conceived a scenario about "the most exotic events in the universe suddenly becoming accessible to humans," and attracted filmmaker Steven Spielberg's interest in directing.[10] The film began development in June 2006 when Spielberg and Paramount Pictures announced plans for a science fiction film based on an eight-page treatment written by Obst and Thorne. Obst was attached to produce the film, which Variety said would "take several years to come together" before Spielberg directed it.[11][12] By March 2007, Jonathan Nolan was hired to write a screenplay for Interstellar.[13]
It is a claim by an MP in UK Parliament, made back in 2005.
They got their number by essentially guessing. Cause there is no such number as "passengers per vehicle".
Fuel consumption estimates for buses are based on National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) estimates combined with road passenger kilometres taken from the 2002 Transport Statistics for Great Britain.
Except there is no such value as "passenger kilometres" for buses in the source as you can't use that for buses - cause they operate by "zones" and not by destinations. Same price for one stop as it is for three or five and passengers keep getting on and off along the way. A ticket price is not related to the of distance that a passenger WILL BE traveling but to the MAXIMUM distance ALLOWED to travel.
So, they rounded it down to the lowest common denominator. "9 passengers average" might be stretched as technically not a "wrong" number - just factually completely inaccurate as an average, minimum or maximum number of passengers.
It's actually the minimum number of passengers a bus must be able to carry in order to NOT BE CONSIDERED a "not-a-bus". If it talks like a bus, drives like a bus... then it is not a taxi, which CAN be used as a bus but it is NOT a bus. So what is a bus? Anything from 9 seats and up.
Taxi industry: 5.9 A taxi, or hackney carriage, is a vehicle with fewer than 9 passenger seats which is licensed to âoeply for hireâ (i.e. it may stand at ranks or be hailed in the street by members of the public). This distinguishes taxis from Private Hire Vehicles (PHVs), which must be booked in advance through an operator and may not ply for hire (taxis may also be pre-booked). Taxis must normally be hired as a whole (i.e. separate fares are not charged to each passenger). However, taxis may charge separate fares when a sharing scheme is in operation, when they are run as a bus under a special PSV operators' licence or when pre-booked (PHV operators may also charge passengers separately if they share a journey).
5.2 Bus and coach services: vehicle stock:1 1990/91-2000/01
What such boycotts actually do is remove what remaining ability they had to feed and house themselves and their families.
Wouldn't say "actually" as always, but I would agree on it meaning "often". Or even "most of the time".
I've become deeply suspicious of those who try to hold up apparently righteous thinking in order to leverage commerce one way or another.
I mostly doubt their abilities to correctly asses the situation more than their motivation. Incompetence trumps malice. And those willing to chance it on an alternative approach tend to be incompetent by definition. Otherwise it wouldn't be an alternative approach but a tried and true strategy. That, and that Niven law about fools and noble causes.
Even Hitler thought that he was doing the greatest thing ever for Germany and the human race. Just like the Soviet block was later willing to sacrifice everything (that means personal freedoms and comfort too, comrade) in that last final decisive battle to unite humanity - it's right there in the song. Or the way USA block was fine with whatever was needed to protect democracy and American way of life from godless communists. Even if that means a dictatorship or two, mister.
Idealism is a great starting point for any professional breaker of eggs. After all, that omelet is just within our reach... you can almost smell it.
Kevlar tactical vests, being essentially a ballistic, polymer weave, have a shelf life of only about 3-5 years or so before they lose their power to slow and stop bullets.
No they don't.
They are GIVEN a shelf life of 3-5 years based on lab tests interpreted in such a way that the continuous chain of procurement of such vests by the police and the military is maintained AND so the producers of said vests could cover their asses in court in case it's needed. "See, your honor, evidence shows that the officer Smith exposed his vest to higher temperature and UV light than what is written on the label. Ergo, it is his fault that high velocity round our client's vest wasn't ever designed for, not to say that it isn't the greatest vest out there, wasn't stopped by the said vest which is still a perfectly safe vest if you buy it brand new every 3-5 years."
Back in reality, you'd need to either soak it in strong acid or expose it to direct UV for hundreds of hours for the fibers to lose a significant part of their tensile strength i.e. bullet stopping abilities. 450 hours of direct UV will degrade 4500 denier kevlar to ~65% and 1500 denier kevlar to ~35%. 900 hours will knock it further to ~48% and ~23%, respectfully.
Even then, that only means that the TOP LAYER is degraded. Kevlar is not transparent. It degrades because it absorbs UV light. And that's IF it was worn on top of other clothes, without any kind of a liner or protective or decorative impregnation. I.e. If police were running around in banana-yellow ponchos for protection from bullets.
It's in the specs and real-life tests by people who are re-selling USED police kevlar vests confirm it.
It's plastic. The stuff that will take millions of years to degrade out of the ecosystem.
It used to be a subsidy in a form of an insurance to small business owners. If your taxi job goes bust, you could trade in all your assets including the car and the license and be at "positive zero". Small business owners love you and vote for you and don't want the rules to change.
BUT... once you can trade/lease something indefinitely and it is kept artificially scarce for the sake of the small businesses - it becomes overpriced AND artificially scarce. Now it benefits large investors and brokers with a lot of money. Who now don't want rules to change and they have money to lobby you to keep the things the way they are - so they can keep making money from the artificial scarcity.
Slashdot Mirror
http://iagp.ac.uk/sites/defaul...
Simulations of solar geoengineering
Increasing the reflectivity of crops
All grassland was made as reflective as possible in the model
Increasing the reflectivity of deserts
The model was altered to act as if all deserts were covered
in highly reflective material
Increasing the reflectivity of the seas
The model was altered to act as if all open sea was covered in micro-bubbles
Increasing the reflectivity of marine clouds
Potentially cloud-altering particles were released over all tropical seas in the model
Forming particles in the stratosphere
Particles were formed in the stratosphere at the equator in the model
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Dropping a giant ice cube into the ocean is still more feasible.
You know... Police, Army, Navy, Air Force, NSA, CIA, FBI, NRA, bronies...
If they can't secure a fuckin mall for an afternoon... What are you paying them for?
Also, WHAT "rational cautions and plausible evidence"?
All the public got so far was some overdue candid insight into scheming of a mega-corporation and what it REALLY thinks about people it uses, hires and its customers.
If that's terrorism, seems to me there's a great demand for more of it.
He sees Asians doing "so well" and concludes that it must be some unfair racial advantage that is starting to backfire on them - so it is perfectly acceptable if they get deducted points for identifying as "Asian".
See... It's one of those "positive racial things"... Like all blacks having big cocks, all Asian women being sexy... Or was that Latinas? Indian women? Swedish? I get confused about that topic...
Anyway... It's not suffering but a GIFT OF NATURE.
Or Santa or whatever...
His cognitive dissonance is so deep in, he doesn't even realize that he's using an example of discrimination based on racial prejudice - as an example of how "well" a certain minority is doing.
"They are doing so well by simply being Asian, that schools are forced to discriminate against them."
See, if you're lucky enough to be born Asian - you're automagically gonna do SO WELL in school some handicaps will simply be fair, to make you more like everyone else.
I have this nagging feeling that he's also a fan of Harrison Bergeron, and that the irony of acceptable handicaps for perceived and prejudiced advantages is lost on him.
Cause apparently in his mind, it is "the system", not the people who make it, that is racist.
And there are "real racism" and "imaginary racism" and "pretend anti-racism" in that "system".
It's you know... like a plan. There are these rules about what is real, imaginary and pretend.
Secret rules of the "system". Which pretends about using one set of rules, but is actually using another.
A conspiracy, if you will.
But you gotta love that cognitive dissonance of his.
They do not, however, show any of the symptoms, for which the imaginary racism is usually blamed when failures of Blacks are discussed: they are not incarcerated disproportionally more often than others (heck, you can't even find them on the chart!) and their incomes aren't lower than those of Whites â" quite the opposite, in fact
"incarcerated disproportionally more often than others" is imaginary racism - because failures of Blacks.
When it's BLACK people who are "incarcerated disproportionally more often than others" - it is imaginary racism, cause Blacks SIMPLY ARE MORE PRONE TO CRIME.
It's their failure as a race.
And can't you see that it's actually the whites who are discriminated?
Just look at that median household income sorted by race - where "White Hispanics" are a part of white Americans group, and "Asians" are generalizing "Chinese", "Filipino", "Indian", "Vietnamese", "Korean", "Japanese" and "other Asians" into one group.
So, whites become poor cause Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Cubans etc. (all well below the "white" median) are bunched together with Russians and Brits, while Asians become all rich due to immigrants in the tech industry and A MUCH SMALLER SAMPLE.
White Americans are 77.7% of population.
Asians are about 5%.
While "African Americans" are some arbitrary subset of Black Americans (12.6%) who identify themselves as such and not actually by the particular country or region of origin - like the way others do.
The bigger the sample the closer the median is to THE AVERAGE.
Whites are getting averaged out with Puerto Ricans and Iraqis, while Asians are showing a median between Indians on the top of the list (just above South Africans) and Bhutanese at the very bottom.
Meanwhile, "African Americans" don't get to be counted with Algerians, South Africans, Egyptians, Sierra Leonean Americans... who are ALL ABOVE "African Americans" on the list.
So, surprise-surprise, a sample ("whites") much closer to the size of the population ends up having a median ($ 54,857) very close to the median of the population ($ 51,914).
While small samples deviate significantly - Asians to the right of the population median ($68,088) due to high wages of Indians in IT, and "African Americans" end up deviating to the left of the curve ($ 35,341).
Note how the same thing happens to "Pacific Islands
OK, I lied; I do have another question. But I'm going to refrain...
Is it about being able to sing?
You are either deliberately missing the point and arguing a metaphor - i.e. trolling; missing the point cause you lack the capacity - i.e. mental skills to tell the metaphor from the argument and both from the issue at hand; or... well... have other issues.
Either way, even my time is more valuable than that.
...from arguing a metaphor through various attempts at insults to having no clue about what you are talking (nope... that's not art) and steering off down that tangent road into the sunset of irrelevant conclusions and off topic.
Also, you're trolling.
So... Hey, you know what?
Wow! You really are riding that fallacy train.
I mean, you cover no true Scotsman, ignoratio elenchi, tu quoque AND you finish off with an ad hominem, per your custom. Nitwit.
You know what? You should sit down on the floor when talking.
That way, you won't fall down on your face as much. Cause your "arguments" don't have a leg to stand on.
I mean... It's not only that you ignore that the sentiment which led ALL crusades was religious hatred of "others".
You are trying to weasel out of Catholics putting Nazis to shame cause "pope and king condemned it"? Riiiiight...
Which is why the pogroms and crusades kept continuing and why Inquisition was established.
Totally unexpectedly. I know, right?
And I just LOVE... no...
I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVEEEEEE!!!! how you've just justified jihad and terrorist activities and every single act of war or killing EVER because... let me get that in original stupid... "don't [they] wage war either?"
Beautiful! What it lacks in grarnrnar it makes up in stupid.
You know what?
You should print a large sandwich sign saying "NUKE NYC!" on one side and "BOMB USA!" on the other and parade with it in front of ground zero.
Followed by similar presentations at various war memorials and military bases.
Please record that for posterity when you do that.
There's never enough good laughs.
...to original poster's style of presenting an "argument".
As I read it, it does in fact exclude the Jewish God and the Christian God, specifically because it excludes other prophets.
Nope. Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses), Isa (Jesus) and others are all prophets in Islam.
Same god. Different language.
In fact, had the popes been a little less dumb and less prosecuting of all flavors of Christianity other than Catholic and inclusive of others instead of constantly starting crusades against them - Islam could have easily been absorbed into Christianity.
It's no different than Mormonism or all those Evangelic flavors that would have been crusaded out had they sprouted when Islam did.
Just ask Cathars. Oh... wait... you can't.
So, if I sypathize with Wall-E, what does that do to your whole argument.
Same thing mustard does. Nothing.
Sympathize ain't empathize.
Also, under the assumption that you are not a dog, your sympathy or empathy just makes you human.
Which again, does nothing to the argument. Cause that is not what it is about.
I'm not the one arguing that sympathy, empathy or anthropomorphizing is wrong or bad.
My argument is about human empathy OF the audience, WITH characters on the screen which are revealed in a twist to ALL be just robots - being INVALIDATED by that twist.
It's Scott yelling at the audience "Your empathy is futile, silly human. There is nothing to empathize with here. You are merely anthropomorphizing a walking toaster. IT does not feel! It is programmed to appear to fell. HA-HAA! And the cake is a lie too. It's made of shit! And you thought it looked tasty and delicious! STUPID HUMANS! YOU ARE ALL STUPID!!! Oh... wait... I'm human too..."
And that is stupid as berating a rock for being a rock.
Or maybe the point was, at what point does "machines faking emotion" become "machines having emotions"?
And the answer would be "never". You stupid audience member.
If Rachel's childhood memories are all fake implants, and Decker's dreams (unicorns) and desires (matchstick man with a hard-on) are all fake implants, they are no different than Leon pretending to be human by carrying around photos (i.e. memories) or Batty memorizing "attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion".
Machines imitating human actions, trying to merely survive.
Besides, it is not about "emotions". They all show plenty of fear and anger, even happiness.
It's about EMPATHY.
The book is all about how humans NEED to empathize.
The movie only works if audience empathizes with the characters.
IF there is humanity in those characters to empathize with - that emphasizes audience's humanity.
If there isn't any humanity, if it is all fake and they are all toasters - that's not emphasizing empathy but pointing a finger at the human cognitive flaw of anthropomorphizing the machines.
It's berating the audience for their human flaws. For being human.
And that is stupid. Particularly coming from another human.
Which makes it a bad movie with a messed up message.
A movie with human Decker has a human witnessing something much like humanity in the machines he destroys, tries to save or is saved by.
The question of "at what point" is his and it is a valid one cause he, as a human, does not have that answer.
He does however, being human and not a machine, have free will and the ability to choose to try and save Rachel DESPITE everything and everyone telling him it will be a futile endeavor.
Not having a precise answer he makes a choice based on intuition and feelings and answers the question with "Now. At this point."
And there is no "sin" in audience feeling the same - cause we are all humans and there is nothing wrong with that. No shame. No sin. Just us. Humans.
It is a better AND more positive movie with a clear message.
The Crusades were a backlash against Muslim invasion nitwit.
Which is why they started off with massacres of Jews. Nitwit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
Same reason, Muslim invasion, started later crusades up north, against "pagans" (Prussians, Slavs, Estonians... basically non-catholics). Nitwit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Or those against Cathars in France. Muslims. Again. Nitwit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
It's almost as if religious goals were then, just as they are now, a pretext for validation of religious hatred against "them" and a carte blanche for looting.
You know... them. Others. Minorities. Those who are different.
Be they Jews, heretics, pagans, Muslims, black, Asian, gays, communists...
Nitwit.
Besides, his eyes are shown to display the same refractive property (the red glow) as all the other replicants including the owl in Tyrell's office.
Sure, sure... That's why they just shine a flashlight into someone's eyes to see if they are a replicant.
Phew... And here I feared there'd have to use some kind of a complicated multi-hour psychobabble test about empathy, memories and baby spiders.
A test, during which, a camera shines a bright red light into their eyes.
A test, during which, they pull the shades down as it is too bright in the room to do the test.
Which shades out the light from the Sun - which just happens to shine in the owl's ONE red glowing eye.
Which is funny, and must be some kind of error in the filming, a goof if you will, cause when the owl turns around NOW IT'S THE OTHER EYE THAT IS GLOWING.
And as we " know " that the red glow is actually an indicator of replicantness and NOT just the light of the Sun reflecting - it must be a goof by a well known hackfraud Ridley Scott.
But the most hilarious bit in these discussions about Deckard being a replicant is that should we accept those arguments to be true (regardless of logic or veracity) - they make BR into a shitty movie and reveal Scott to be a crappy director. And the whole thing is pushed by none other than him.
Why is that a shitty movie?
Cause human Decard showing empathy for toasters (which is what replicants are after all - just a machine with a timer which tells them what to do and when) emphasizes his HUMANITY.
Deckard's reluctance to return to the job, him falling for Rachel, him being afraid of Batty and then sharing in his final moment - it's all a show of his humanity.
And, the audience being human, it recognizes its own humanity in his.
A toaster pretending to be reluctant (it has no feelings - it's just a preprogrammed toaster) chasing a toaster, who does not want to be a toaster and wants to be a real boy/girl, pretending to fall for a toaster who thinks it's a real girl but finds out it is only a toaster, then pretends to be afraid, pretending to understand a toaster having a pretend moment... there is EXPLICITLY nothing to relate to in such a story.
Further more, it's an equivalent of a movie where the director shows the audience a man eating a juicy cake - and then tells the audience after credits that the cake is actually made of feces.
It is a movie which implies that the audience is stupid for assuming that what they are seeing is true.
Only, when that truth is empathy and humanity, Scott is actually trying to berate the audience for BEING HUMAN.
Either way, he comes of as an idiot. A George Lucas without all the toys.
He has issues. His brother CLEARLY had issues as well, maybe it runs in the family.
But Ridley's are more along the lines of some obsessive compulsive disorder combined with confidence issues.
He keeps second guessing his own work and taking any criticism at face value and as absolute judgment of quality.
Which is why so many of his movies end up with half the footage on the cutting floor.
The making of featurette of The Legend is very revealing of his flaws.
It's not that he will cut up the movie cause he heard some potheads snickering in the audience - it's how he will plunge openminded into any nonsense anyone suggests. Cause it will work in his mind at the moment.
"At the moment" being the operative term - as a single question later he will throw it out.
Though a moment ago he was all into scrapping half the movie and starting it over with l
their methodology was utter shite.
Only thing Nazis experiments on Jews in death camps could be good for is using them as an example of CONFIRMATION BIAS.
And possibly for weeding out racists and holocaust deniers from the academia.
Actually, one of the worst things you could do TO a totalitarian government is to laugh about them.
Nope.
Totalitarian regimes rely on fear and intimidation. Both go out the window once you see that the emperor has no clothes.
Also nope.
The actual quote mentions a TYRANT. A singular ruler whose power relies heavily on personal reputation.
Misapplying that to a regime at best makes you misinformed. At worst disappeared.
A totalitarian government is NOT one that NEEDS fear and intimidation to rule. It's a government that already HAS you by the balls.
It does not need fear or intimidation. That's for petty dictatorships. A totalitarian government has CONTROL over rules and laws.
I.e. It does not need to intimidate you into not drinking alcoholic beverages. It just makes it illegal.
So, because it is aware of its own power, it is perfectly fine with letting you get your rocks off at its expense - as it knows that all it has to do is squeeze for your laughter to become a squeal.
And it also knows that if it lets you bark at it you will never get frustrated enough to bite, while it can dismiss you with a wave of a hand "proving its openness to criticism".
If you do eventually bite... well, you're clearly a mad dog. Just look at all your history of constant barking.
It's totalitarian cause it already has all the power and control. It doesn't need fear nor does it fear ridicule.
Only those who DO NOT have absolute power, but pretend that they do, fear laughter.
One of the worst things a Government can do is make people laugh at it.
In no particular order... war, recession, genocide, ecological disaster, government prescribed religion, concentration camps, fascism, disbanding of social services, police state...
All far worse and clearly in a different category from "make people laugh at it".
The entire article could be summed up as "How our confirmation bias made us change the rules until the results confirmed our bias."
In a second analysis, they allowed the payoffs to vary outside the order set by the Prisoner's Dilemma. Instead of unilateral defection winning the greatest reward, for example, it could be that mutual cooperation reaped the greatest payoff, the situation described by a game known as Stag Hunt. Or, mutual defection could generate the lowest possible reward, as described by the game theory model known as the Snowdrift or Hawk-Dove game.
What they found was that, again, there was an initial collapse in cooperative strategies. But, as the population continued to play and evolve, players also altered the payoffs so that they were playing a different game, either Snowdrift or Stag Hunt.
"So we see complicated dynamics when we allow the full range of payoffs to evolve," Plotkin said. "One of the interesting results is that the Prisoner's Dilemma game itself is unstable and is replaced by other games. It is as if evolution would like to avoid the dilemma altogether."
"See? When I change the rules of poker to be like blackjack, the game evolves into a game of blackjack on its own! Fascinating! It is as if evolution would like to avoid the poker altogether."
and at the most extreme end of the social structure capitalism
Capitalism is not a social system - it's an economic system. I.e. It is about making and trading THINGS.
You "win" by making and having more things faster.
Socialism and communism are social AND economic systems. Being SOCIAL they are primarily about benefits of PEOPLE AND/OR SOCIETIES.
You "win" by achieving a satisfied and happy society.
That's why it intuitively works for families and tribes - goals are common and simple.
And why it is a bitch to work in a larger society in which many smaller groups may have conflicting and complex goals.
He is also one of the two people who came up with the idea for the movie.
The premise for Interstellar was conceived by film producer Lynda Obst and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who collaborated on the 1997 film Contact and had known each other since Carl Sagan once set them up on a blind date.[8][9] Based on Thorne's work, the two conceived a scenario about "the most exotic events in the universe suddenly becoming accessible to humans," and attracted filmmaker Steven Spielberg's interest in directing.[10]
The film began development in June 2006 when Spielberg and Paramount Pictures announced plans for a science fiction film based on an eight-page treatment written by Obst and Thorne. Obst was attached to produce the film, which Variety said would "take several years to come together" before Spielberg directed it.[11][12] By March 2007, Jonathan Nolan was hired to write a screenplay for Interstellar.[13]
Morse.
It is a claim by an MP in UK Parliament, made back in 2005.
They got their number by essentially guessing. Cause there is no such number as "passengers per vehicle".
Fuel consumption estimates for buses are based on National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) estimates combined with road passenger kilometres taken from the 2002 Transport Statistics for Great Britain.
Except there is no such value as "passenger kilometres" for buses in the source as you can't use that for buses - cause they operate by "zones" and not by destinations.
Same price for one stop as it is for three or five and passengers keep getting on and off along the way.
A ticket price is not related to the of distance that a passenger WILL BE traveling but to the MAXIMUM distance ALLOWED to travel.
So, they rounded it down to the lowest common denominator.
"9 passengers average" might be stretched as technically not a "wrong" number - just factually completely inaccurate as an average, minimum or maximum number of passengers.
It's actually the minimum number of passengers a bus must be able to carry in order to NOT BE CONSIDERED a "not-a-bus".
If it talks like a bus, drives like a bus... then it is not a taxi, which CAN be used as a bus but it is NOT a bus.
So what is a bus? Anything from 9 seats and up.
Transport Statistics Great Britain, 2002, 5 Public Transport: Notes and Definitions
Taxi industry: 5.9
A taxi, or hackney carriage, is a vehicle with
fewer than 9 passenger seats which is licensed to
âoeply for hireâ (i.e. it may stand at ranks or be
hailed in the street by members of the public).
This distinguishes taxis from Private Hire
Vehicles (PHVs), which must be booked in
advance through an operator and may not ply for
hire (taxis may also be pre-booked). Taxis must
normally be hired as a whole (i.e. separate fares
are not charged to each passenger). However,
taxis may charge separate fares when a sharing
scheme is in operation, when they are run as a
bus under a special PSV operators' licence or
when pre-booked (PHV operators may also
charge passengers separately if they share a
journey).
5.2 Bus and coach services: vehicle stock:1 1990/91-2000/01
1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01
Single deckers:
Thousands
up to 16 seats 8.1 7.9 8.7 9.4 9.3 8.8 10.0 10.5 10.9 11.6 10.9
17-35 seats 11.5 12.4 13.5 14.5 15.9 16.5 16.6 13.6 14.4 13.9 15.0
36 plus seats 30.2 29.8 29.5 30.8 30.4 30.8 30.5 34.9 36.4 37.8 38.0
All single deckers 49.8 50.1 51.7 54.7 55.6 56.1 57.1 59.0 61.7 63.2 63.8
All double deckers 22.2 21.3 20.9 20.1 19.7 19.6 18.6 17.1 17.0 16.8 15.9
All vehicles 71.9 71.4 72.7 74.8 75.3 75.7 75.7 76.1 78.7 80.0 79.7
That "9 passengers average" is like saying that average number of seats for motor vehicles is 1 - because motorcycles.
What such boycotts actually do is remove what remaining ability they had to feed and house themselves and their families.
Wouldn't say "actually" as always, but I would agree on it meaning "often". Or even "most of the time".
I've become deeply suspicious of those who try to hold up apparently righteous thinking in order to leverage commerce one way or another.
I mostly doubt their abilities to correctly asses the situation more than their motivation.
Incompetence trumps malice. And those willing to chance it on an alternative approach tend to be incompetent by definition.
Otherwise it wouldn't be an alternative approach but a tried and true strategy.
That, and that Niven law about fools and noble causes.
Even Hitler thought that he was doing the greatest thing ever for Germany and the human race.
Just like the Soviet block was later willing to sacrifice everything (that means personal freedoms and comfort too, comrade) in that last final decisive battle to unite humanity - it's right there in the song.
Or the way USA block was fine with whatever was needed to protect democracy and American way of life from godless communists. Even if that means a dictatorship or two, mister.
Idealism is a great starting point for any professional breaker of eggs. After all, that omelet is just within our reach... you can almost smell it.
Kevlar tactical vests, being essentially a ballistic, polymer weave, have a shelf life of only about 3-5 years or so before they lose their power to slow and stop bullets.
No they don't.
They are GIVEN a shelf life of 3-5 years based on lab tests interpreted in such a way that the continuous chain of procurement of such vests by the police and the military is maintained AND so the producers of said vests could cover their asses in court in case it's needed.
"See, your honor, evidence shows that the officer Smith exposed his vest to higher temperature and UV light than what is written on the label. Ergo, it is his fault that high velocity round our client's vest wasn't ever designed for, not to say that it isn't the greatest vest out there, wasn't stopped by the said vest which is still a perfectly safe vest if you buy it brand new every 3-5 years."
Back in reality, you'd need to either soak it in strong acid or expose it to direct UV for hundreds of hours for the fibers to lose a significant part of their tensile strength i.e. bullet stopping abilities.
450 hours of direct UV will degrade 4500 denier kevlar to ~65% and 1500 denier kevlar to ~35%.
900 hours will knock it further to ~48% and ~23%, respectfully.
Even then, that only means that the TOP LAYER is degraded. Kevlar is not transparent. It degrades because it absorbs UV light.
And that's IF it was worn on top of other clothes, without any kind of a liner or protective or decorative impregnation.
I.e. If police were running around in banana-yellow ponchos for protection from bullets.
It's in the specs and real-life tests by people who are re-selling USED police kevlar vests confirm it.
It's plastic. The stuff that will take millions of years to degrade out of the ecosystem.
Not from US but it is obvious from the summary.
It used to be a subsidy in a form of an insurance to small business owners.
If your taxi job goes bust, you could trade in all your assets including the car and the license and be at "positive zero".
Small business owners love you and vote for you and don't want the rules to change.
BUT... once you can trade/lease something indefinitely and it is kept artificially scarce for the sake of the small businesses - it becomes overpriced AND artificially scarce.
Now it benefits large investors and brokers with a lot of money.
Who now don't want rules to change and they have money to lobby you to keep the things the way they are - so they can keep making money from the artificial scarcity.
Who said anything about $1m per year.
You just did.
Or you lease / work for someone with a medallion etc