You have to un-mix the counter-intelligence "New Age Love & Light" bullshit from your data. (Provided by the same agencies which popularized LSD and who want to ensure that the real message has been thoroughly garbled and made nonsensical so that the regular populace can only laugh and carry on with their sleepwalks.)
Here's the version I put most credence into at the moment. ..
Atlantis was a world spanning empire much like Western American culture today. In the next cycle of this reality, I imagine that 'America' will be the ancient lost civilization all the New Agers will write silly and dreamy books about and not understand for what it was.
Atlantis was also in possession of much higher technology that we have. Apparently they had outposts on various planets and the Moon; they used crystal technology, (whatever that implies), and could move matter and energy around in a Star Trek kind of way. They were also just as power hungry and corrupt as the current global empire. There was big, messy world war, lots of misery and the whole thing ended in global catastrophe with a shower of comets which wiped out pretty much everything. Even the technology of Atlantis wasn't enough to stop Big Rocks Falling From The Sky.
The queerest-seeming part is that time is cyclical and that we are experiencing the same end of the story events, slightly modified from the last cycle. We have lower tech this time around, for some reason. Go figure. But the Global War and Big Rocks are real enough!
Strange theory, to be certain, but the one I put most credence in at the moment.
I was actually just put on the spot half an hour ago in such a ridiculous manner that my head is still spinning. (A so-called friend asking for help in ways I am not entirely sure were friendly.) I'm sitting here trying to work out how to deal with this puzzle without betraying a loyalty and while not playing the chump. Your point that questions are a subtle form of command is quite timely, and indeed, illuminating! Thanks!
It strikes me that no matter how clever or skilled one becomes, in Life there will always be found puzzles which provide tests specifically tailored to challenge at one's relevant skill level.
are you with me brothers? lets take back the museums from the bourgeois capitalist pigs!
Ha ha. Yeah, I did write a little over-extravagantly. But that doesn't do anything to diminish my point.
I hope you are not the sort who thinks that a little ridicule will make uncomfortable ideas go away. It doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. Wish it did!
If you intend to write biting sarcasm, you might want to avoid using re-tread jokes which have been used absolutely and utterly to DEATH. --Otherwise, you might look kinda silly while attacking somebody, (me), who is complaining that Museums and the people who believe in them are limping along on old and tired ideas.
Do you see my point?
Perhaps not. That much brain mass requires a spine strong enough to support it. Irony is not a dish for the weak.
There is vast knowledge living in the world today; knowledge which can blow open the shutters of the human mind and which is not being shared and which will certainly not be found in the halls of a public museum.
Big Government and big Corporate bodies lie and lie and lie. Keeping secrets is the name of the game! And who funds such extravagant projects as 'Halls of Science' and 'Museums'? When the Government will only tell you about the fighter jets it was building twenty years ago, and when Corporate America won't tell how it promotes illness through the food it sells with its Left hand, while promoting half-cures with the drugs it sells with the Right. ..
Oh, yes. These power bodies are certainly not going to hold anything back when they build a public brain-washing sanctum like a museum! (Sarcasm!)
Science is about the search for truth. So then what greater hypocrisy can you find than the Government/corporate funded 'science' museum?
"But they are not telling lies!"
Oh, but they are! A lie by omission, by inference. . . The most clever of lies work in the most clever of ways. Advertisers understand; The greatest lie sold by an advertiser is that people are not affected by advertising. --And there is no division here! These are the same people who build all the museums.
While a museum may delight us with examples of apple-on-the-head science in all its many glories, the broad picture painted is one of, "Here Is What We Clever Humans Know!" --A severely limited and false picture which so many people go away feeling great comfort and self-satisfaction in believing. Brain washing!
The universe is far more amazing than your keepers want you to know. But that's okay. Nobody can keep knowledge from you if you are determined to go and find it out for yourself.
Get out of the antiseptic halls of the museum and jump into the real world beyond. As the museum brochures claim, "There is so much to see and do, you can't possibly fit it all into one day!"
I cannot STAND the way in which the word processor scrolls. --Or more accurately, does NOT scroll.
Type, type, type, get to bottom of screen.
JUMP
What the. . ?
Blink.
Re-Acquire cursor.
-My document has suddenly been advanced, not one line, but five lines for no reason other than I happened to be typing near the bottom of the page. Some smart alec programmer thinks that it's fun to make my eyes go jiggy in the name of. . . What? He thinks I'm going to get confused if I have to use scroll keys to advance my document all by myself? If you can jump me ahead five lines and do it in such a way as to not rip my attention away from the cursor, then that's great. But you CAN'T. Maybe this is because my brain is broken. Or maybe it's because people who program word processors don't also have to use them for a living, because they're programmers!!! As I see it, anybody who doesn't have a problem with this maddening 'feature' is either a more evolved human than me, or is somebody who doesn't use a word processor for a living.
And you can't turn it off! This 'jump ahead 5 lines feature' is hard-coded into the program! Jeez! A radio button was too much to ask for? --And this 'feature' is not just in Open Office. Nooo. Lots of word processors provide this back-asswards idea of convenience.
I'm currently using Abiword. Even though it has its little quirks and faults and imperfections, it doesn't try to user-friendly me into the ground. I'm a grown up, and I bloody know how to page advance all on my own, thank you very much!
-FL
No correlation.
on
D&D Is 30
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Some of the most oft-laid stud types I knew when I was in highschool were also hard-core D&Ders. To the point of telling girls, "Sorry. Not tonight. I'm D&Ding with the guys!"
(You can only really do that when you are reasonably well assured of meeting and bedding a new girl any night you decide to hit whatever scene you hit.)
D&D is this generation's Poker Night. The harsh reality is that only good looking guys with well-built bodies get a regular stream of the kind of girls all teen-aged boys sweat over. Everybody else starves. Oooh, boo hoo. Life is sooo unfair.
For everybody else, (and we're talking 95% of the male population), there's D&D and if you're lucky, a good girl friend now and again.
What can possibly be more revealing about a person than all the searches one makes, (and which are never forgotten.) What kind of searches have YOU made in the last two years?
What drives the Google architecture? I dunno. Borrowed muscle/money from the shadow government?
I mean, Google already has 'ex'-NSA guys (no such thing as 'ex') on their payroll.
Do they take you away and put you in a barbed wire holding facility?
This is coming. Don't kid yourself. Did you think this kind of hot Frog-Water was a possibility five years ago? The world has changed a lot, hasn't it? This is by design.
You can't even thank Bush for this, even though his people helped 9-11 into being. The trap is closing fast. Of course, there are ways to avoid being processed. ..
1. Wake up and actively seek the answers to the Whys and Wherefores behind the manner in which 'reality' works.
2. Once you understand the enemy, you will then have enough information to tackle the problem of what to do next. Until then, you are spinning in the dark.
The difference is that most people will defend every other part of the school system; the versions of history, science, obedience and social herding behavior that they grew up with because the indoctrination methods used are very effective and very hard to break after even a few years of it.
While there are several qualities in the school system I consider valuable, (getting to interact with everybody else in your regional society regardless of their social and financial bearing, providing a common place to forge lasting friendships and organize your own learning and exploration with others of like-mind, and providing the illusion of 'Scholarly Authority' which you have about ten years to learn how to see through, overcome and in fact manipulate to your advantage before you get out into the so-called 'real' world. But very few of these valuable points had anything to do with sitting in front of a chalk board.
The MPAA presents the least of the challenges today's kids have to deal with.
I KNOW for certain that I would have been one of the kids sitting at the front, calling "BULLSHIT" down on the MPAA's crap.
Making somebody question their teaching career by pointing out the truth is a harsh but fairly necessary thing to do once in a while. And the students usually like to see the stuffing knocked out of the system which they instinctively know is screwing with them.
You turn it off, and the picture doesn't go away. (More accurately, it only draws power when changing pages... I wouldn't be surprised if there's no on/off switch at all.) This is huge.
I mean, it looks exactly like an old style LCD display. Black text on silver-grey background. --Oh, except this one has been modified to be readable in direct light, just like, um. . , an old LCD display.
Also, I thought the idea of digital paper was that it was supposed to be, well, flat. This thing is built like a calculator.
Is there something here I'm not getting. . ? It looks like re-packaged old technology to me. --Not that I haven't been looking for something like it; the screens on PDA's are just too small. But this isn't the holy grail, I think. And it's certainly not worth three hundred and something dollars.
Not for something which might as well be an old LCD display, (and which may very well be just that.)
If it wasn't for Pirate Software groups stealing from the Rich and Giving to the Poor, I'd have only seven programs or less running on my machine.
This is a sad day, marking a grim landmark on the recent hell-bent March Towards Fascism, where Tax Dodging Media Corporations are protected by the police we keep employed, and only rich people are allowed to use software and communication tools. Everyone else should be sent to work houses and punished for being poor.
So a tip of the hat to you guys; You will be both missed and remembered fondly. The days of the digital Pirate are slipping away. ..
"If You Like This Program, We Encourage You To GO OUT AND BUY IT!
That password isn't worth a lump of sweet brown anything.
You work for some cruddy company which treats you poorly and requires that you key in your arcana ten times daily just to access the word processor?
Who the heck cares about that one?
Question is, why would somebody want your password? Don't they have their own? When it comes down to the crunch(y bar), when Betty from down the hall, (who everybody knows is a manipulative sociopath), offers you a Snickers Bar for your password, you'd have to be just about 70% stupid to accept.
This question is so academic, it could only be a Slashdot article.
"It makes zero sense, it's having immediate negative impact, and the government I voted for is all in favor. What the hell. . ?"
And so, rather than worry that there is a psychopath in charge of the ship, all the little conservatives scamper to find logic in the mess, straighten their ties, wipe away their sweat, and walk out the front door to make a good presentation to the world. These are the same dorks who got gold stars and smelly stickers on their school tests. That their teachers are imbeciles is too dark a fear to face.
Please.
The world has ALWAYS had different levels of labor cost and living standard. The world has had trade vessels capable of advantaging from this reality for the last century. But only recently has the upper management in America decided that the ship is going down, and so is scrabbling to snatch up as much quick profit as possible before she does. --And even that might be too generous. It could be just blind selfishness for no reason at all.
During the car production wars between Japan and the U.S., there were these things call "Trade Negotiations, and Tariffs". --Essentially, "We'll let you export to us ten million walkmans if you buy our iron ore. Doesn't matter, so long as the balance of trade is maintained."
The politicians you voted for worked hard to make sure that trade barriers existed, that "Buy American" was a promoted saying. And why did they do this? I'll tell you why. ..
Because if we follow the current crop of popular idiotic Darwinian Economics arguments, then yes, the strong will rise to the top. But guess what? The 'Strong' are measured by population size, not just smarts. The Chinese and the workers of India have both massive numerical advantage AND smarts. --AND most of them live in poverty where nobody has refrigerators.
Hmm. . . Massive wealth on the one side. ..
Picture a fish tank with a piece of glass dividing two halves. One half is full to the top with poverty, misery and mud huts. The other side has only an inch or so lapping at the bottom. Think of the piece of glass as the trade barrier. Now think of conservative idealogues pulling up the glass while shaking their heads, "Well, that's just how it is. Darwinian Economics, you know. Completely Unmanaged Market Forces are a GOOD thing!"
Market Forces = Market Power.
And as we all know, with great Power there comes ZERO responsibility! Right? I mean, why control power? Why not just let it explode everywhere? Why would anybody do anything so stupid as install things like fire bricks. Or pipes.
Directing power is Evil!
Ahhh. The conservative mind set.
What these assholes and/or twits, don't tell you is that the guys pulling up the glass are making a gazillion personal dollars from the resulting chaos. They'll be okay. You won't. They're doing two things; they're trying to rationalize their own brand of "Cut Throat Competition", (they're getting rich by screwing YOUR life, after all), and they're trying to trick all the mid-level idealogue conservatives into following yet another one of those world-shaping, doomed to fail in fifty years social experiments.
Here's the hard truth behind this trade policy; Unless you OWN the company which is doing the outsourcing and are making a million dollar salary, you are toast.
Where's the, "Tool-boy of Propaganda" mod when you need one. . ?????
Nice to see all those zillions of dollars spent on mind-games by the Bush and Israeli governments haven't gone to waste.
Damned Hobbits. Burn down their own shire if they're told to. ..
-FL
Rationalizing away the boogie man. . .
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 1
Those who want to know, will seek and see the picture for what it is. It's getting very hard to avoid awareness.
Those who want to stay snuggled up in a comfortable lie will shun knowledge, and ironically, will be among the first to suffer. Frustratingly, they are also among the greatest causes of the various problems.
he claims is a new literary category called the 'digital epistolary novel', or DEN.
If all his works sound this appealing, then I'm sure he'll be making tens of dollars in no time.
Anyway, Griffin and Sabine has done the series of letters as a story already, and in grand style, I might add. The novelty novel. With paintings and cursive handwriting and little pasted-in envelopes.
Frankly, I can't think of anything further from the romantic ideal than ASCII. Of course, I can also think of several relationships which began on-line, so who am I to judge?
This has been discussed countless times here on Slashdot, and none but those in very deliberate denial, (cowards), have not reached a place where they do not realize that there are risks involved; that there is a real phenomenon at work.
Have you noticed that there are no student protests about the hell being perpetrated upon the world by the U.S. military industrial complex? I have. Kids are simply not aware, or they are too numbed out by all the forces assaulting them, (anti-depressants, chemical food, EM pollution, toxic media), to be able to react the way an unhampered human would normally be able. There was a time when political awareness was a significant part of youth culture; where it affected foreign policy. It had an effect!
Cell phones annoy me, but at least people have the choice as to whether or not to use them. Campus wide wireless highspeed networks however. ..
Ah well. It's not like universities are bastions of free thought anymore. Get out while you still can.
Choice is everything. Most people will choose to ignore; to go back to sleep. To believe the lies. These people are going to get eaten. Screw 'em. I have no pity for cowards.
Wireless communication is one of the three pillars of the electronic opiate of the masses. Along with Television and computer games, wireless technology limits your ability to question and think. They drain energy, very directly limiting awareness. News Flash: You need a high level of energy if you are going to be able to perceive events happening on higher levels of reality. If this sounds weird to you, it simply means you are among the ignorant. Sorry. It's true. It's your job to get with the program, and munching on poisonous food, radiating your head with cell technology and vegging in front of 'Survivor' is not the way to do it.
Go figure. One might think I'd made a reputation for myself around these parts. (grin)
Anyway, I have three questions for all the very-smart-people here who are knee-jerking with such vehemence on this story. (Over 700 comment posts? Oh my! What deep nerves we have struck!)
1. Who told you that magnets could not be utilized in this way?
2. Why did you believe them?
3. Did you ever try it yourself? (Or were you the sort of a 'good' kid who did as you were told and who basked in the resulting praise?)
You can gauge the depth and intensity of a piece of social programming by the violence of the public auto-response. Interestingly, it's around now that this kind of technology would be 'allowed' into the public realm. Oil is going the way of the dodo, after all! Seems kind of a moot issue, to me, though. What with the world ending and all.
But who listens to me? It's not like my articles rate thumb tacks on this cork board.
Your average Red Shirt command level staffer is able to, using only a sharp piece of scrap metal, reprogram the innards of a Starfleet issue communicator so that it functions as an emergency transporter.
I guess the components in starship guts have good documentation printed right on the parts.
Good luck trying to use more than 256mb of ram on that Win98 box.
Hm. I didn't know that! Though, since my current hardware doesn't even support more than 256mb, I guess I'll worry about it another time.
Though, I'll tell you. . . When the world is crashing and burning all around me and my out-dated Win98 box is still chugging away on critical projects, (not games,) with no problems, I can only thank myself for deciding to jump off the MS Bandwagon of DOOM before the turn of the century.
I'm switching to Linux soon anyway, now that they've solved the CMYK issue.
Seems that the touch screen voting issue is becoming increasingly common knowledge, and yet there appears to be no real mechanism for fixing things.
What do you do? Do you get your elected official to fight the problem? Right up to the highest court, perhaps. Maybe you'll get lucky and you won't have to deal with one of the judges installed by Bush.
Civil wars start this way. --Or they would if people had any energy left over from their daily lives. If the bad guys weren't in charge of the military.
The trap is closing, friends. As Sauron put it, "The hour is later than you think!"
Slashdot Mirror
George Bush = Pussy
Colin Powell = Colon (Sceptic tank for the Ass)
Dick Cheney = Dick
Look around you in your regular life. I believe that the Universe is just one big thought pattern, which means that psychological metaphor rules.
-FL
Here's the version I put most credence into at the moment. .
Atlantis was a world spanning empire much like Western American culture today. In the next cycle of this reality, I imagine that 'America' will be the ancient lost civilization all the New Agers will write silly and dreamy books about and not understand for what it was.
Atlantis was also in possession of much higher technology that we have. Apparently they had outposts on various planets and the Moon; they used crystal technology, (whatever that implies), and could move matter and energy around in a Star Trek kind of way. They were also just as power hungry and corrupt as the current global empire. There was big, messy world war, lots of misery and the whole thing ended in global catastrophe with a shower of comets which wiped out pretty much everything. Even the technology of Atlantis wasn't enough to stop Big Rocks Falling From The Sky.
The queerest-seeming part is that time is cyclical and that we are experiencing the same end of the story events, slightly modified from the last cycle. We have lower tech this time around, for some reason. Go figure. But the Global War and Big Rocks are real enough!
Strange theory, to be certain, but the one I put most credence in at the moment.
-FL
I was actually just put on the spot half an hour ago in such a ridiculous manner that my head is still spinning. (A so-called friend asking for help in ways I am not entirely sure were friendly.) I'm sitting here trying to work out how to deal with this puzzle without betraying a loyalty and while not playing the chump. Your point that questions are a subtle form of command is quite timely, and indeed, illuminating! Thanks!
It strikes me that no matter how clever or skilled one becomes, in Life there will always be found puzzles which provide tests specifically tailored to challenge at one's relevant skill level.
Cheers!
-FL
Ha ha. Yeah, I did write a little over-extravagantly. But that doesn't do anything to diminish my point.
I hope you are not the sort who thinks that a little ridicule will make uncomfortable ideas go away. It doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. Wish it did!
-FL
Do you see my point?
Perhaps not. That much brain mass requires a spine strong enough to support it. Irony is not a dish for the weak.
-FL
Big Government and big Corporate bodies lie and lie and lie. Keeping secrets is the name of the game! And who funds such extravagant projects as 'Halls of Science' and 'Museums'? When the Government will only tell you about the fighter jets it was building twenty years ago, and when Corporate America won't tell how it promotes illness through the food it sells with its Left hand, while promoting half-cures with the drugs it sells with the Right. .
Oh, yes. These power bodies are certainly not going to hold anything back when they build a public brain-washing sanctum like a museum! (Sarcasm!)
Science is about the search for truth. So then what greater hypocrisy can you find than the Government/corporate funded 'science' museum?
"But they are not telling lies!"
Oh, but they are! A lie by omission, by inference. . . The most clever of lies work in the most clever of ways. Advertisers understand; The greatest lie sold by an advertiser is that people are not affected by advertising. --And there is no division here! These are the same people who build all the museums.
While a museum may delight us with examples of apple-on-the-head science in all its many glories, the broad picture painted is one of, "Here Is What We Clever Humans Know!" --A severely limited and false picture which so many people go away feeling great comfort and self-satisfaction in believing. Brain washing!
The universe is far more amazing than your keepers want you to know. But that's okay. Nobody can keep knowledge from you if you are determined to go and find it out for yourself.
Get out of the antiseptic halls of the museum and jump into the real world beyond. As the museum brochures claim, "There is so much to see and do, you can't possibly fit it all into one day!"
-FL
Type, type, type, get to bottom of screen.
JUMP
What the. . ?
Blink.
Re-Acquire cursor.
-My document has suddenly been advanced, not one line, but five lines for no reason other than I happened to be typing near the bottom of the page. Some smart alec programmer thinks that it's fun to make my eyes go jiggy in the name of. . . What? He thinks I'm going to get confused if I have to use scroll keys to advance my document all by myself? If you can jump me ahead five lines and do it in such a way as to not rip my attention away from the cursor, then that's great. But you CAN'T. Maybe this is because my brain is broken. Or maybe it's because people who program word processors don't also have to use them for a living, because they're programmers!!! As I see it, anybody who doesn't have a problem with this maddening 'feature' is either a more evolved human than me, or is somebody who doesn't use a word processor for a living.
And you can't turn it off! This 'jump ahead 5 lines feature' is hard-coded into the program! Jeez! A radio button was too much to ask for? --And this 'feature' is not just in Open Office. Nooo. Lots of word processors provide this back-asswards idea of convenience.
I'm currently using Abiword. Even though it has its little quirks and faults and imperfections, it doesn't try to user-friendly me into the ground. I'm a grown up, and I bloody know how to page advance all on my own, thank you very much!
-FL
(You can only really do that when you are reasonably well assured of meeting and bedding a new girl any night you decide to hit whatever scene you hit.)
D&D is this generation's Poker Night. The harsh reality is that only good looking guys with well-built bodies get a regular stream of the kind of girls all teen-aged boys sweat over. Everybody else starves. Oooh, boo hoo. Life is sooo unfair.
For everybody else, (and we're talking 95% of the male population), there's D&D and if you're lucky, a good girl friend now and again.
-FL
What drives the Google architecture? I dunno. Borrowed muscle/money from the shadow government?
I mean, Google already has 'ex'-NSA guys (no such thing as 'ex') on their payroll.
Ho hum. .
-FL
Do they take you away and put you in a barbed wire holding facility?
This is coming. Don't kid yourself. Did you think this kind of hot Frog-Water was a possibility five years ago? The world has changed a lot, hasn't it? This is by design.
You can't even thank Bush for this, even though his people helped 9-11 into being. The trap is closing fast. Of course, there are ways to avoid being processed. .
1. Wake up and actively seek the answers to the Whys and Wherefores behind the manner in which 'reality' works.
2. Once you understand the enemy, you will then have enough information to tackle the problem of what to do next. Until then, you are spinning in the dark.
3. Tin Foil Hats? Yeah, ha ha. Papers, please.
-FL
The difference is that most people will defend every other part of the school system; the versions of history, science, obedience and social herding behavior that they grew up with because the indoctrination methods used are very effective and very hard to break after even a few years of it.
While there are several qualities in the school system I consider valuable, (getting to interact with everybody else in your regional society regardless of their social and financial bearing, providing a common place to forge lasting friendships and organize your own learning and exploration with others of like-mind, and providing the illusion of 'Scholarly Authority' which you have about ten years to learn how to see through, overcome and in fact manipulate to your advantage before you get out into the so-called 'real' world. But very few of these valuable points had anything to do with sitting in front of a chalk board.
The MPAA presents the least of the challenges today's kids have to deal with.
I KNOW for certain that I would have been one of the kids sitting at the front, calling "BULLSHIT" down on the MPAA's crap.
Making somebody question their teaching career by pointing out the truth is a harsh but fairly necessary thing to do once in a while. And the students usually like to see the stuffing knocked out of the system which they instinctively know is screwing with them.
-FL
Ahhh. Yes, I see now. That IS cool.
-FL
Also, I thought the idea of digital paper was that it was supposed to be, well, flat. This thing is built like a calculator.
Is there something here I'm not getting. . ? It looks like re-packaged old technology to me. --Not that I haven't been looking for something like it; the screens on PDA's are just too small. But this isn't the holy grail, I think. And it's certainly not worth three hundred and something dollars.
Not for something which might as well be an old LCD display, (and which may very well be just that.)
-FL
This is a sad day, marking a grim landmark on the recent hell-bent March Towards Fascism, where Tax Dodging Media Corporations are protected by the police we keep employed, and only rich people are allowed to use software and communication tools. Everyone else should be sent to work houses and punished for being poor.
So a tip of the hat to you guys; You will be both missed and remembered fondly. The days of the digital Pirate are slipping away. .
"If You Like This Program, We Encourage You To GO OUT AND BUY IT!
Hm.
-FL
Honest. It's just the drugs.
-FL
That password isn't worth a lump of sweet brown anything.
You work for some cruddy company which treats you poorly and requires that you key in your arcana ten times daily just to access the word processor?
Who the heck cares about that one?
Question is, why would somebody want your password? Don't they have their own? When it comes down to the crunch(y bar), when Betty from down the hall, (who everybody knows is a manipulative sociopath), offers you a Snickers Bar for your password, you'd have to be just about 70% stupid to accept.
This question is so academic, it could only be a Slashdot article.
-FL
"It makes zero sense, it's having immediate negative impact, and the government I voted for is all in favor. What the hell. . ?"
And so, rather than worry that there is a psychopath in charge of the ship, all the little conservatives scamper to find logic in the mess, straighten their ties, wipe away their sweat, and walk out the front door to make a good presentation to the world. These are the same dorks who got gold stars and smelly stickers on their school tests. That their teachers are imbeciles is too dark a fear to face.
Please.
The world has ALWAYS had different levels of labor cost and living standard. The world has had trade vessels capable of advantaging from this reality for the last century. But only recently has the upper management in America decided that the ship is going down, and so is scrabbling to snatch up as much quick profit as possible before she does. --And even that might be too generous. It could be just blind selfishness for no reason at all.
During the car production wars between Japan and the U.S., there were these things call "Trade Negotiations, and Tariffs". --Essentially, "We'll let you export to us ten million walkmans if you buy our iron ore. Doesn't matter, so long as the balance of trade is maintained."
The politicians you voted for worked hard to make sure that trade barriers existed, that "Buy American" was a promoted saying. And why did they do this? I'll tell you why. .
Because if we follow the current crop of popular idiotic Darwinian Economics arguments, then yes, the strong will rise to the top. But guess what? The 'Strong' are measured by population size, not just smarts. The Chinese and the workers of India have both massive numerical advantage AND smarts. --AND most of them live in poverty where nobody has refrigerators.
Hmm. . . Massive wealth on the one side. .
Picture a fish tank with a piece of glass dividing two halves. One half is full to the top with poverty, misery and mud huts. The other side has only an inch or so lapping at the bottom. Think of the piece of glass as the trade barrier. Now think of conservative idealogues pulling up the glass while shaking their heads, "Well, that's just how it is. Darwinian Economics, you know. Completely Unmanaged Market Forces are a GOOD thing!"
Market Forces = Market Power.
And as we all know, with great Power there comes ZERO responsibility! Right? I mean, why control power? Why not just let it explode everywhere? Why would anybody do anything so stupid as install things like fire bricks. Or pipes.
Directing power is Evil!
Ahhh. The conservative mind set.
What these assholes and/or twits, don't tell you is that the guys pulling up the glass are making a gazillion personal dollars from the resulting chaos. They'll be okay. You won't. They're doing two things; they're trying to rationalize their own brand of "Cut Throat Competition", (they're getting rich by screwing YOUR life, after all), and they're trying to trick all the mid-level idealogue conservatives into following yet another one of those world-shaping, doomed to fail in fifty years social experiments.
Here's the hard truth behind this trade policy; Unless you OWN the company which is doing the outsourcing and are making a million dollar salary, you are toast.
-FL
Nice to see all those zillions of dollars spent on mind-games by the Bush and Israeli governments haven't gone to waste.
Damned Hobbits. Burn down their own shire if they're told to. .
-FL
Those who want to stay snuggled up in a comfortable lie will shun knowledge, and ironically, will be among the first to suffer. Frustratingly, they are also among the greatest causes of the various problems.
In either case, you are a coward.
Congratulations.
-FL
If all his works sound this appealing, then I'm sure he'll be making tens of dollars in no time.
Anyway, Griffin and Sabine has done the series of letters as a story already, and in grand style, I might add. The novelty novel. With paintings and cursive handwriting and little pasted-in envelopes.
Frankly, I can't think of anything further from the romantic ideal than ASCII. Of course, I can also think of several relationships which began on-line, so who am I to judge?
-FL
This has been discussed countless times here on Slashdot, and none but those in very deliberate denial, (cowards), have not reached a place where they do not realize that there are risks involved; that there is a real phenomenon at work.
Have you noticed that there are no student protests about the hell being perpetrated upon the world by the U.S. military industrial complex? I have. Kids are simply not aware, or they are too numbed out by all the forces assaulting them, (anti-depressants, chemical food, EM pollution, toxic media), to be able to react the way an unhampered human would normally be able. There was a time when political awareness was a significant part of youth culture; where it affected foreign policy. It had an effect!
Cell phones annoy me, but at least people have the choice as to whether or not to use them. Campus wide wireless highspeed networks however. .
Ah well. It's not like universities are bastions of free thought anymore. Get out while you still can.
Choice is everything. Most people will choose to ignore; to go back to sleep. To believe the lies. These people are going to get eaten. Screw 'em. I have no pity for cowards.
Wireless communication is one of the three pillars of the electronic opiate of the masses. Along with Television and computer games, wireless technology limits your ability to question and think. They drain energy, very directly limiting awareness. News Flash: You need a high level of energy if you are going to be able to perceive events happening on higher levels of reality. If this sounds weird to you, it simply means you are among the ignorant. Sorry. It's true. It's your job to get with the program, and munching on poisonous food, radiating your head with cell technology and vegging in front of 'Survivor' is not the way to do it.
Good luck out there.
-FL
Anyway, I have three questions for all the very-smart-people here who are knee-jerking with such vehemence on this story. (Over 700 comment posts? Oh my! What deep nerves we have struck!)
You can gauge the depth and intensity of a piece of social programming by the violence of the public auto-response. Interestingly, it's around now that this kind of technology would be 'allowed' into the public realm. Oil is going the way of the dodo, after all! Seems kind of a moot issue, to me, though. What with the world ending and all.
But who listens to me? It's not like my articles rate thumb tacks on this cork board.
-FL
I guess the components in starship guts have good documentation printed right on the parts.
-FL
Hm. I didn't know that! Though, since my current hardware doesn't even support more than 256mb, I guess I'll worry about it another time.
Though, I'll tell you. . . When the world is crashing and burning all around me and my out-dated Win98 box is still chugging away on critical projects, (not games,) with no problems, I can only thank myself for deciding to jump off the MS Bandwagon of DOOM before the turn of the century.
I'm switching to Linux soon anyway, now that they've solved the CMYK issue.
-FL
What do you do? Do you get your elected official to fight the problem? Right up to the highest court, perhaps. Maybe you'll get lucky and you won't have to deal with one of the judges installed by Bush.
Civil wars start this way. --Or they would if people had any energy left over from their daily lives. If the bad guys weren't in charge of the military.
The trap is closing, friends. As Sauron put it, "The hour is later than you think!"
-FL