So perhaps somebody would like to enlighten me as to what in hell they're expecting?
Haven't you been receiving a PILE of extra spam in your inbox of late? Haven't you been reading about all the viruses which have been causing 'havoc'? Heck, didn't you watch the propaganda-saturated Terminator 3?
Damnit, man! You're clearly not taking your pills or tuning into enough CNN! There's a war on, mister! And so what if it's a make-believe war?! The Great Muppet-President has a schedule to keep, you ungrateful boat-rocker! What are you? Some kind of godless-commie-fag-comic book reading-pot smoking-cab driving terrorist? Don't you appreciate that people died so that you could have your freedoms!?
Why, I oughta call TIPS on your ass and tell the FBI what library books you've been borrowing!
I was going to write a serious reply to your post, but detected the delicate smell of a troll at work.....checks FL's profile and posting history...
Yup, it's a troll.
Collect three (3) troll points and give yourself a cookie.
Next!
"Next?" --Like you're some sort of authority charged with processing a stream of ideas, which you enjoy doing with flip dismissal. How empowered you must feel! I'm glad you don't actually have any real authority, or surely innocent people would hang thanks to your thoughtlessly dispensed 'wisdom'.
What I find interesting is how carelessly posts are relegated to 'Troll' status these days. I'm not even entirely clear what a 'Troll' is. --I thought at one time that a Troll was an ego-deficient poster looking to deliberately draw negative responses from people because any attention was better than none at all. But it seems today that any posting which challenges the status quo is considered a 'Troll'.
I think people who cry 'Troll' are often just frightened of new ideas.
If somebody, (obeying the laws of thermodynamics), managed to build an anti-gravity device, how long would the military hold on to that technology before allowing it into the realm of public industry? 5 years? 20 years?
Here's another question. ..
Could somebody invent such a device, raise the capitol, hire the people, and create the industry required to bring the technology to market without the military finding out about it beforehand?
Yeah. That's what I figure as well.
And so finally. . . (And this is my problem with 95% of the tech-dreaming on Slashdot.)
Why do so many people bother getting excited at all by the comings and goings of publicaly accessible science and industrial advancement? --When all such advancement is not really advancement at all, but merely the controlled release of ancient technology which somebody already came up with fifty years ago and which the military sees no further need to keep under wraps?
Cuz, you see, any 'announcements' about any new developments which matter, are ALL 100% P.R. bullshit. Amazingly, everybody pretty much knows this, because the logical steps needed to reach that conclusion are painfully obvious. --And yet, most people quietly go along with the charade as though the U.S. military-industrial complex wasn't actually a multi-trillion dollar goliath which controls nearly every aspect of science and industry.
Most of the tech-geeks I've ever met are just a bunch of grown-up kids playing at pretend, wishing for a Star Fleet future while trying like hell to ignore the 10 ton gorilla in the living room.
As somebody who has seen the "impossible", knows "impossible" people, has done the "impossible", and who knows several people who have been shot and/or hospitalized as a direct result of being "impossible", I can assure you that both you and James Randi are babes in the wood.
Particularly in these times, anybody dumb enough to try to prove anything to an ignorant and undeserving public, (for money, no less!), is pretty much demanding to get shot at. And if that isn't enough to keep the real thing away in droves, then Randi's brand of witch-hunt, kangaroo-court science is sufficiently ridiculous to do the rest of the job.
If you need examples of his 'professionality', try doing some reading about Randi outside the temple dogma. And no, I'm not going to provide that for you either. It's out there. Go look for it. Seeing is a choice which can only be made by you, and unless you are willing to start the search on your own, your mind will forever be closed. You are entirely free to remain as ignorant as you choose. And guess what? In the end, nobody else cares because you are the only one who has to carry the weight of your own self-imposed disability. Despite what society teaches, the gold stars handed out for defending one's lack of knowledge under the banner of 'skepticism' aren't worth a damn.
It's funny, but your reaction is as much of a kneejerk as you make his out to be. And you wonder why both stereotypes have been ingrained so deeply the past 50 or so years.
I think the part I like best is how when he thinks he is off the public record, all pretense of civility and rationality drop like a rock.
Interestingly, I find that this brand of follower is fairly common. The primary fear/motivation in life to the exclusion of virtually all other considerations is to be accepted by the pack. They tend to be a mess when you delve more deeply, because s/he has spent most available energy on maintaining surface appearances, scrambling to keep up with common concensus and the hell away from anything which is publically scorned, regardless of logic. --Which, incidentally, is why they use ridicule with such force, i.e., the 'Tinfoil Hat' refrain ad nauseum; because they have a gut level fear of such tactics, (an ancient survival mechanism trumped up and deliberately induced early on through childhood trauma), they exist in a near permenant state of fear of being excluded. They have great difficulty conceiving why such tactics have virtually no effect on those who have managed to break free of that particular control mechanism.
Consequently, it's very easy to sell lies to this sort; partly because they're so scrambled that they are entirely unable/unwilling to grasp that their thoughts might be regularly influenced by numerous outside sources, everything from the immediate media to seeds planted during childhood. (It takes forever to undo all of this programming in order to find oneself. Most people never even start! "I'm 100% me, baby! And my favorite soft drink is. ..") --So long as s/he perceives what direction the group concensus is pointing in, you can almost always gurantee a falling in line. These methods work exceptionally well.
--Incidentally, if you look around, you will discover that I'm not actually a stereotypical example of anything. Honestly; when was the last time you ran across the 'conspiracy theorist' stereotype in anything other than a television show? --And before you answer too quickly, you should know that I am gainfully employed, well educated, bathe regularly, have many friends and am well respected in my community.
What if... The shuttle was already moving very fast, with some rather high speed wind going by. What if the foam, while pretty hard, is also light. What if air resistance slowed it down substantialy. Then, there could be a much greater difference in their speeds.
A 500+ mph differential achieved in one second due to wind resistance? You're reaching.
Anyway, we all saw the foam fall in the video footage. And if we could see it, then it sure as heck wasn't moving at 500 mph relative to the camera!
"Three of the largest voting machine vendors in the United States have convicted criminals in high positions, according to Mercuri. "Sequoia, ES&S, and Shoup all have top people that been convicted for bribery of election officials or insider trading," Mercuri told AFP, adding, "How can it not be a criminal enterprise?" From this story.
I've looked around for the original interview, but was unable to find it. Jeff Rense runs a cool site, but he publishes everything, so it's definitely Caveat Lector in those waters.
Yes I am suggesting conspiracies don't exist. [. ..] Fucknut.
Hm. I provide a thoughtful post with some valid points, and you respond with unthinking rudeness.
This clears up a great deal regarding the intelligence level of your initial post. That is, you seem to have no brain. But perhaps I am speeding to a conclusion too quickly. Let's see if you can answer the following. ..
Upon what exactly do you base your belief that people never conspire to keep damaging data from the public? Could you please provide a link or something? Or is it purely intuition upon which you base your complete faith in the Corporate management, Government workers and Organized crime of the world?
It seems that at least 30% of the posts here noted just how incredibly ridiculous it was that the foam in NASA's "experiment" was being fired at 500mph, when the real piece had been traveling at an almost relative speed to the shuttle. (That is, when it parted from the Shuttle body, it stopped accelerating, and so the impact speed was that of the Shuttle's rate of acceleration over a period of about half a second. After doing all the math, I came up with an approximate speed between 3 and 14 MPH, depending on how long the foam was in free fall between separating from the Shuttle to bouncing off the wing. Luckily, Slashdotters are nothing if not good at their highschool physics and hyper-linking skills.)
What I find interesting is that this desperate attempt to kill the story came about shortly after the email was uncovered in which a NASA tech at the time said the foam piece was of no consequence.
And what is NASA hiding? (Well, actually, they're more or less in the dark, with the exception of perhaps a few insiders who suspect). But don't kid yourselves. There's definitely pressure on America's own space agency to kill this once and for good.
Why?
I know this is going to sound ridiculous, (hell, counting the negative mods I got for this post the first time around, I know some of you dislike the tone of it so much that some want it to vanish from their warm and illusory little realities but good!), --Kids, I have it on good authority that the shuttle was shot down by a space-based EM weapon in order to make a point. --That point being, "Get your ass in gear, Bush. You and your piddly nation are nothing. Do as you are told or we will not spare you. Now get WWIII underway. We don't care how stupid the lies you have to tell are. Attack Iraq, you little shit, or else." (Or something along those lines.)
Sound nuts? Just wait. You'll change your minds soon enough. (They'll see. They'll ALL see! Bwahahahaha. etc.)
So relegate me into Troll Dust again, kids. I can always re-post. (Again!) --I'll generally have more Karma than you have mod points, and when I want something said, you will damned well know it. Don't like it? Then go stuff some more gum in your ears. This predictable little reality is ending all around us. Try to take it with a little spine, for goodness sake!
It seems that at least 20% of the posts here noted just how incredibly ridiculous it was that the foam in NASA's "experiment" was being fired at 500mph, when the real piece had been traveling at an almost relative speed to the shuttle.
Interesting that this desperate attempt to kill the story came about shortly after the email was uncovered in which a NASA tech at the time said the foam piece was of no consequence.
And what is NASA hiding?
I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but kids, the ship was shot down by a space-based EM weapon in order to make a point. --That point being, "Get your ass in gear, Bush. You and your piddly nation are nothing. Do as you are told or we will not spare you. Now get WWIII underway. Attack Iraq, you little shit." (Or something along those lines.)
Sounds nuts? Think I'm irritating now? Just wait until the day when you have to admit to yourself that I was right.
Yes all the nurses that were interviewed were plants. It's all a big gov't conspiracy. They also faked the moon landing.
Don't be foolish.
Of course all the nurses that were interviewed were not plants.
But are you trying to suggest that conspiracies don't exsit? That's moronic. You're appear to be another casualty of the social programming which has nulled the word "conspiracy" to the point where people don't believe in it regardless of any rationality. Here's what I like to do for people who are so programmed. ..
Instead of saying "Conspiracy," try using instead the word, "Corruption".
They're basically the same thing. Do you not believe in Government Corruption either? Are people who complain about corruption all cranks and weirdos who should be shunned and disbelieved on principal?
I'll let you chew on that. Let's see if you have the balls to examine this bit of programming within you and de-bug it like a man, rather than lull yourself back to sleep by telling yourself comfy lies like, "I'm right and that creepy poster is just some internet crank." --That is, stick with the prvailing concensus because it's easier and more comfortable to go with the crowd than to think for yourself. Being ostricised by a bunch of weaklings is far, far worse than being a dupe.
But the people that devote themselves to cruelty and selfishness have no higher success rate than those who do the opposite. They are just as likely to suffer and to die nastily.
And that's exactly the point I am making. Martin is incorrect in this very assertion. --You even said it yourself. "I agree with you only insofar as you assert that people having a positive outlook on life, and attempting to make the world a happier place and to treat others justly and generously, is more likely to bring happiness to them and others than if they cynically look out only for their own selfish interests, and believe that this is the only way for them to prosper."
Exactly. People who devote themselves to cruelty and selfishness have a much LOWER success rate than those who work in the positive. ('Success' being determined by the levels of misery, wisdom and personal growth experienced by the practitioner of life.)
But I emphatically disagree with you that GRRM is peddling the cynical line, or that readers of his books come away from them more inclined than they were before to selfish egotism or despair of there being any happiness or goodness to be found in the world.
Except you just demonstrated that he does exactly this. (re, the first sentence paraphrased above).
Martin is, in a large part, preaching the same old lie. --The one which Christianity has been pushing for centuries; i.e. "You should Do The Right Thing, but you MUST expect to die on the cross a martyr because of it. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Dignity begets misery."
I have observed directly this effect among the half dozen people I know who have read Martin's work; I look at the way they approach their lives, and I see that Martin's work is merely another reinforcment of the principal. It doesn't have to be that way, and it wouldn't be if people would just figure it out. It's so simple!
Further, another common factor which astounds me every time I see it, is that the very people who praise works for having darkness within them because, "it is naive to think that there is no darkness in the real world," are the very people who deny up and down that they are being manipulated by bad people every single day. (Fluoride in the water can't be bad! Cell phones can't be bad! Corporations which own both food and drug interests can't be deliberately making people sick! The school system can't be an attempt to subvert human awareness! What America Stands For can't really be nothing more than an elaborate piece of crowd control. And on, and on. --And yet, so many people who like to see darkness in their stories call me naive because I choose instead to recognize the reality of the world itself and have no patience for it in the fiction I read. --Particularly when those, (as in Martin's case), aren't portraying darkness with the insight required to do it in a useful or responsible way.
Here's the thing; Knowledge is power; Knowledge protects. --Being aware of the darkness reduces it to something manageable. This is how misery is avoided. And this is the problem with Martin. --While he does show that naivety and wishful thinking are punishable by having your head hit hard against the wall of reality, his heros; those who are aware of the harsh realities of the world end up twisted and hurt by it. They end up cynical and stunted. --Heck, his dwarf character is the physical embodiment of this (false) principal! Now perhaps Martin himself is still in the learning process, and is still smarting from his own lessons. Perhaps, (hopefully), he will come out the other end and realize that Knowledge of Darkness does not need to twist and make one miserable! Why? Because when one embraces knowledge, you embrace not just darkness but light as well, as all are part of the whole; this is where the great masters arise from. There is even a word for it! "Ohm!" There is no need for cynicism when one embraces all, because everything is in balance, always, and this knowledge gives all the protection and power one needs to travel through life with both strong effect and grace.
How do you get the unruly, anti-authority, (semi)self-aware denizens of the web to accept crazy government control of the Internet without them all completely losing their cool and instigating demonstrations, riots and impeachments? Heck, skip the tech-geeks; How do you get Mom and Dad and Joe-Office-Guy to beg the government to take away their information freedoms?
Why, you set up some fall-guy-scapegoat-to-be, in some foriegn country to flood the net with crazy quantities of spam. (Easy to do. After all, the U.S. military already owns most of the name-server companies which connect your www.address to an actual I.P. number. And the CIA is renowned for setting up and turning into manipulable assets people, companies, countries and even twerps like Bin Laden.)
Then you wait for the pot to come to a boil, (which it hasn't quite yet), and then with the help of Big Brother Bill and his earth-flattening software company, introduce some seriously insane control measures. Serialized computer chips. Carnivore-style information traffic monitoring. Bottomless jail cells. You know the drill. (The net has been around for ages, but the whole spam deluge is happening now? --Right when the whole erosion of rights parade just happens to be going into high gear? The reality of this situation is staring us in the face, my friends! Cripes! If you take notes while living during these times, you'll end up with a book you can entitle, "How to take over the world in 10 easy steps. --And get away with it!".
But all of that isn't quite good enough. Nope. You want to really make sure the message hits home. Better slowly release documentaries and news stories about the evil hackers and their viruses, and how Bad Things Can Get. --Heck, you really need to drive the wedge in there but good! Damn. Better announce July 6th as, "Hack Lots Of Web Pages Day", and time it with the release of a popular film with a popular actor loaded to the gills with mind-control shmuck-stuff. (SkyNet was the result of a hacker-deployed virus? Sheesh.) Luckily, government spooks are no better at writing movie scripts than are script writers. That's probably why the whole 911 thing felt oddly reminiscent of a cheese-ball Bruce Willis flick.)
But anyway, that's how you do it. Simple. Easier even than flying jets into skyscrapers!
-FL --This is not a troll. This is just meant to provoke thought. If those thoughts anger you, try asking "Why?"
99% of people can draw a line between fantasy and fiction.
The 1% that can't will find any stimulus to follow their inclinations. That is not the fault of a writer.
It is good that there are writers that expose us to dark worlds, that way we can play with darkness in the safe container of our own imagination.
Reverse those percentages, and I'd agree with you whole heartedly. Anybody who has a regular day-job, a mortgage, and a die-hard irrational belief in either a) A religion, or b) Skepticism/Atheism has been successfully advertised at without even realizing it. The only option is to not check one of the provided options on the test card. The people giving the test don't want you to pass.
I mentioned Joseph Goebbles before. He understood these things, and knew how to use them very effectively. Advertising and mind-control have only gotten more clever since those days, and the biggest trick pulled off is lulling people into thinking that they are too smart to be affected by behavior modification. One of the most difficult barriers to overcome, (that of the searcher who has learned to regularly subject his beliefs to harsh self-criticism in order to find any gaffs or errors), opens up wide when you lull people into a false sense of self-control. When was the last time you sifted through the workings of your own head looking for inconsistencies? --Did you rationalize and feel better, or did you look the error in the face and go through the painful work required to correct things?
It's a sad truth that people tend to be far more easily fooled by political bullshit after they have had some university schooling. --They see University as a big stamp of 'Smartness', absorb without question the information spat at them by 'professors' and allow their egos to become larger in being able to repeat this info with 'authority'.
This is not to say that there aren't some very smart people in higher education. I've met a few of them. But students tend to NEVER question what they are told. --And this is a direct result of the way the system is shaped. Unquestioning obedience to authorities, and to prevailing group-opinion.
Now if you happened to have read Martin's book and thought, "Okay. This is good writing, but Martin has a very dark and biased view of reality which only works because he is imperiously forcing the story mechanics to demonstrate his one-sided view of reality which is in no way an accurate depiction of how things really work," then you passed that particular test and you can claim to perhaps exist within that 1%. But go read the comments on this site. You'll note that perhaps only two people voiced this sort of reaction, while nearly everybody else voiced nothing but unmitigated approval of, and more importantly, a sort of sympathetic resonance with Martin's work.
Maybe you should talk to some health care workers about how "nothing was done". You know, the ones who put in countless hours + overtime working to contain an unknown disease. They put themselves & their families at risk day after day for whiney little bitches like you. You should be grateful.
Hm. So included in that "A for Effort" would also be quarentine orders regularly ignored by health care professionals during the first two weeks? --And SARS carriers being sent home because the doctors didn't believe that patient conditions were anything more than common cold symptoms?
Look, I realize that the medical community did get serious, and that they worked diligently with the information they had available. But I'm sorry. It was too little, too late, even for them. --You have to remember, that when things like this spin out of control, which it did, the powers that be have to create a convincing illusion, not just for the public, but also for the workers within the infrastructure. They did a pretty good job, too.
So, do you actually know any health care workers? What did you hear?
Actually, Toronto's response wasn't good enough. I was there. Their medical people and populace acted like a bunch of television zombies. (Cuz, you know, bad things only happen on TV). WAY too little, WAY too late. Typical Western day dreaming. "Nothing can topple this reality. It's so big and shiney! It will last forever and ever!"
Sheesh.
Now the fact that the West isn't reeling from a sweeping plague is interesting, isn't it? Very little was done differently here than in China, except here it all turned out okay, didn't it? Nothing bad ever really happens. Reality just keeps on tugging along, so there's no point in being too concerned. There's always a job in the morning and always a television at night.
--The cause was Chinese spitting and bad sewage? Get real. While the Chinese may spit, and while their sewage systems may suck, (neither of which I am certain are entirely true. Never seen a Chinese spit in any media until now), it's still just PR spin doctoring. If doctors and nurses were dropping like flies and even WHO personell were dying. . , if people taking the right precautions, wearing the right plastic, washing their hands between patients, (and not spitting on the hospital floors). . , if these people were still getting sick, then Toronto should be a toxic plague zone right now.
Have you seen the under-funded, over-strained Toronto public transit system on a hot day during rush hour? --I was there during the height of the SARS thing, and I can tell you first hand that there was some serious fluid exchange going on down there in those nasty tunnels. --And in those hermetically sealed work-places with too little air-cycling. Do you know how easily disease spreads? People get the flu for a reason. You can't stop shit like that; not after nearly three weeks of lax measures and people ignoring quarantine orders. People only started taking things seriously when it was essentially WAY too late. Disease vectors multiply geometrically, folks. You basically can't staunch those kinds of flows after more than ten days of unlimited spread.
China needed military measures, mass panic and a near total shut-down of their economy to get things under some semblance of control. But Toronto, day-dreaming through the whole event with little more than some newscasts showing ambulance drivers wearing plastic suits to make people think that 'Something Was Being Done', was able to stop SARS cold after three weeks of doing virtually nothing? Give Me A Break.
Toronto should be a big red glowing dot on some military map right now, and it would be if somebody hadn't stepped in.
Can you say, "Friendly Fire"?
They don't make 'em if they can't cure 'em. (Man, and when they finally piss off China enough, the ant will be stamped by the elephant. I'm willing to bet that the US military doesn't have enough bullets for every Chinese. Do you have any idea how big the standing army is in China? --Before a draft?)
Too bad it's all a stage production. The masters of China and the masters of the US are the same. It's all a light show, folks! And SARS, (in the West, anyway), was Hamlet fumbling his lines. But the audience doesn't care. Nobody knows their Shakespear anymore.
Of course, I'm just a crank. I don't know anything. Move along citizen.
How many other books by George R. R. Martin have you read besides this one ? Please read Tuf Voyaging, for example, and think again.
I read the first hundred pages of the next in the Game of Thrones series, (but cannot recall the title.) I got very much fed up with it and had to stop.
It is possible that his other works are not in the same vein, and if so, then I was innacurate in using the term, 'his books'. --Although, in this case, I was only referring to the ones he has most recently written; those in this particular and popular series.
Let's be realistic, intelligent people doesn't "stop to be good an honest" just because the characters of the book are bad and vicious, and they win.
That is a matter of opinion, and one which I disagree with. I believe that the media is in fact VERY good at reflecting and re-inforcing social patterns. Joseph Goebbels would have agreed with me, I think.
The greatest lie ever told by advertisers is that advertising doesn't work.
And, could you make your argument without personal disqualifications ? Thanks.
I call it as I see it. Anybody who writes from such a grim place has clearly lost his way. Hence, 'Loser' is very appropriate, I think.
IOW, what karmic events cause the karmic effects you claim are in operation?
Because I am dying to know......
No you're not. It sounds to me as though you are very firmly decided on how you want to percieve the universe. When you get tired of being limited, (possibly several lives from now), then you might want to know, and only then you will be in a position to hear the answers.
It's not my job to interrupt your current path. Heck, if I manage to upset the trajectory chosen by your higher self and mess up the lessons you've designated for yourself this life, why. . , that's bad Karma, and I'd have to pay for it later.
But of course, that's all nonsense. Today, I am just a fool on the web.
Martin's craft is flawless. He's a damned clever story teller. It's his stunted and cynical view of life which I absolutely could not swallow! Good people in his books are routinely punished for being good, beauty is reviled and destroyed, decay is demonstrated to be the only natural course of nature, people with positive view-points are savagely 'dis-abused' of their notions, and his sexualization of pre-teen girls was entirely unsavory. Martin clearly exists within and writes to us from a very dark reality. Fine. His problem. --What I find frightening is that so many people seem to resonate with it in such enthusiastic terms.
My life has been described as Lucky. I have been accused of being a 'Joy Junkie'. I have been sneered at for not being miserable. --For having 'unrealistic' expectations of the world, (and despised when those expectations come true.)
Now, I am not a proponant of the whole, "You create your own reality," camp of Budhist philosophy. --Yes, on a deep level, we DO create our own reality, but I certainly don't know how to tweek those strings, and nobody I have ever met has been able to either. (If it's winter outside, no amount of wishing or meditating is going to change that.)
However. . , that being said, I absolutely believe that one can color their corner of reality, affecting the prevailing winds of 'chance' and the collective perceptions and attitudes of others in how they interact with reality. --And I believe that this kind of habitual approach to life creates a cascade effect over 'time', which DOES change the way in which the world works. Butterfly wings and all that.
Story tellers like George R. Martin are mis-directed and dangerous in that they are so agile in portraying their own dismal views of reality that their readers can be swept up into such dark perspectives and through this, change their own world for the worse.
How evil or good our world is, is largely determined by what people believe the prevailing social norms are and how they act them out. Yes, there are bad people in power who know how to manipulate. But this is a result of social programming and ignorance on behalf of the people; it has nothing to do with any nonsense belief that "bad things sometimes happen to good people and that's just the way it is." --Because it simply isn't true; the universe is nowhere near that random. Karma works. --But because people have been led away from this sort of awareness and pushed into a collective head-space where misery and chaos are the norms, then OF COURSE it's going to appear that losers like George R. Martin have the most accurate line on 'reality'.
Books like Martin's I find disturbing for many reasons.
Joe reads Martin.
Joe is convinced.
Joe stops trying to be good and honest.
Multiply.
All the other readers acting like asses around him are his proof that Martin was right.
I thought Martin's craft was flawless. He's a damned clever story teller. It's his stunted and cynical view of life which I absolutely could not swallow! Good people in his books are routinely punished for being good, beauty is reviled and destroyed, decay is demonstrated to be the only natural course of nature, people with positive view-points are savagely dis-abused of their notions, and his sexualization of pre-teen girls was entirely unsavory. Martin clearly exists within and writes to us from a very dark reality. Fine. His problem. --What I find frightening is that so many people seem to resonate with it in such enthusiastic terms.
How evil or good our world is, is largely determined by what people believe the prevailing social norms are and how they act them out. Books like Martin's I find disturbing for many reasons.
Yeah. Thanks for catching my '?' typo. Appreciate it. If you could put that much observational effort towards investigating the world you live in rather than indulging in cynicism and expecting others to do all your work for you, then you might end up a more worthwhile human being.
Just for the sake of redundancy. . . I clearly know things that you don't. That makes me stronger than you. I am under no obligation to offer my info up for free, but I did anyway. If you don't want to believe me, or investigate my claims, or put them on 'hold' until other/better info comes along into your life. --If you don't even want to be polite. . . Well, fine. That's your problem. I'm still the one who knows more than you. I'm the one with the advantage.
I could prove my knowledge to you, it would be difficult, because you want to see easy websites whereas my knowledge comes from direct experience which cannot be 'hyperlinked', but it could be done. However, it would take a lot of effort and you're acting like an undeserving ass who values and defends his own ignorance. --Who hasn't figured out that society is set up in this way precisely to keep people from advancing.
So enjoy your stagnation. I'm that dot moving away from you on the horizon.
The culture of skepticism is, I have concluded, one of the most amazingly powerful and effective control mechanisms currently in existence!
Follow along if you will. ..
1. I don't care how stupid you want to remain. It's not my job to prove anything to you. If I do, it is because I am feeling gracious and generous. NOBODY automatically deserves convincing evidence EVER. You don't win a prize for staying ignorant.
2. I worked in the magazine industry for several years. I know what I'm talking about. You haven't so you don't. If something in what I say seems fishy to you, then look it up or shut up. Or at the very least, ask nicely for me to provide further info.
3. The internet is not the be-all end-all in evidence. You want to know how the magazine industry works? Go to your local bookstore and ask them. Get on the telephone and call up a magazine distributor and ask them
Gad, I hope you're just a troll, because nobody should be that stupid!
Magazines are destroyed if they don't sell; the covers returned to the publisher for a refund. So the bookstore doesn't lose a dime, unlike if an actual product was stolen. As such, this IS not the same as shoplifting. The only money being 'lost' is that of a potential sale, which probably wouldn't happen anyway, since the 'thief' is clearly not concerned with the content of the article, (since you can't hope to read comprehensive text from a 120 x 120 dpi JPG image.)
As for the publisher, point of purchase sales, except in the cases of maybe the 5 or 6 leading magaaines, don't account for ANY significant amount of income. The publishers make virtually ALL their money from the advertisers. So they have no reason to care! --Heck, the simple fact that ANYBODY is bothering to leaf through their rag looking for pictures of dresses to scan, should make them happy.
All in all, this sounds like just another dumb excuse to clamp down on society with ever-increasing thumbscrews of social control.
Thank goodness people are wise enough to impeach stupid and dangerous leaders.
I seem to recall that NASA ran an experiment a dozen years or so ago testing the theory that if you trailed a few hundred meters of wire behind the shuttle, an electric charge would build up. The idea was that a shuttle could supplement its power reserves through such a source, if it panned out. I can't recall if the theory was that electricity would be derived from static friction, or the Earth's magnetic properties, or if it had something to do with solar wind, but anyway. ..
A very large charge built up rather more quickly than the experiment designers had imagined and the wire melted and broke.
Slashdot Mirror
Haven't you been receiving a PILE of extra spam in your inbox of late? Haven't you been reading about all the viruses which have been causing 'havoc'? Heck, didn't you watch the propaganda-saturated Terminator 3?
Damnit, man! You're clearly not taking your pills or tuning into enough CNN! There's a war on, mister! And so what if it's a make-believe war?! The Great Muppet-President has a schedule to keep, you ungrateful boat-rocker! What are you? Some kind of godless-commie-fag-comic book reading-pot smoking-cab driving terrorist? Don't you appreciate that people died so that you could have your freedoms!?
Why, I oughta call TIPS on your ass and tell the FBI what library books you've been borrowing!
Don't make me come down there!
-FL
Yup, it's a troll.
Collect three (3) troll points and give yourself a cookie.
Next!
"Next?" --Like you're some sort of authority charged with processing a stream of ideas, which you enjoy doing with flip dismissal. How empowered you must feel! I'm glad you don't actually have any real authority, or surely innocent people would hang thanks to your thoughtlessly dispensed 'wisdom'.
What I find interesting is how carelessly posts are relegated to 'Troll' status these days. I'm not even entirely clear what a 'Troll' is. --I thought at one time that a Troll was an ego-deficient poster looking to deliberately draw negative responses from people because any attention was better than none at all. But it seems today that any posting which challenges the status quo is considered a 'Troll'.
I think people who cry 'Troll' are often just frightened of new ideas.
-FL
That's right.
Go back to sleep. Thinking is bad for you.
-FL
If somebody, (obeying the laws of thermodynamics), managed to build an anti-gravity device, how long would the military hold on to that technology before allowing it into the realm of public industry? 5 years? 20 years?
Here's another question. .
Could somebody invent such a device, raise the capitol, hire the people, and create the industry required to bring the technology to market without the military finding out about it beforehand?
Yeah. That's what I figure as well.
And so finally. . . (And this is my problem with 95% of the tech-dreaming on Slashdot.)
Why do so many people bother getting excited at all by the comings and goings of publicaly accessible science and industrial advancement? --When all such advancement is not really advancement at all, but merely the controlled release of ancient technology which somebody already came up with fifty years ago and which the military sees no further need to keep under wraps?
Cuz, you see, any 'announcements' about any new developments which matter, are ALL 100% P.R. bullshit. Amazingly, everybody pretty much knows this, because the logical steps needed to reach that conclusion are painfully obvious. --And yet, most people quietly go along with the charade as though the U.S. military-industrial complex wasn't actually a multi-trillion dollar goliath which controls nearly every aspect of science and industry.
Most of the tech-geeks I've ever met are just a bunch of grown-up kids playing at pretend, wishing for a Star Fleet future while trying like hell to ignore the 10 ton gorilla in the living room.
-FL
It sounds as though you believe it too!
As somebody who has seen the "impossible", knows "impossible" people, has done the "impossible", and who knows several people who have been shot and/or hospitalized as a direct result of being "impossible", I can assure you that both you and James Randi are babes in the wood.
Particularly in these times, anybody dumb enough to try to prove anything to an ignorant and undeserving public, (for money, no less!), is pretty much demanding to get shot at. And if that isn't enough to keep the real thing away in droves, then Randi's brand of witch-hunt, kangaroo-court science is sufficiently ridiculous to do the rest of the job.
If you need examples of his 'professionality', try doing some reading about Randi outside the temple dogma. And no, I'm not going to provide that for you either. It's out there. Go look for it. Seeing is a choice which can only be made by you, and unless you are willing to start the search on your own, your mind will forever be closed. You are entirely free to remain as ignorant as you choose. And guess what? In the end, nobody else cares because you are the only one who has to carry the weight of your own self-imposed disability. Despite what society teaches, the gold stars handed out for defending one's lack of knowledge under the banner of 'skepticism' aren't worth a damn.
Good luck out there.
-FL
I think the part I like best is how when he thinks he is off the public record, all pretense of civility and rationality drop like a rock.
Interestingly, I find that this brand of follower is fairly common. The primary fear/motivation in life to the exclusion of virtually all other considerations is to be accepted by the pack. They tend to be a mess when you delve more deeply, because s/he has spent most available energy on maintaining surface appearances, scrambling to keep up with common concensus and the hell away from anything which is publically scorned, regardless of logic. --Which, incidentally, is why they use ridicule with such force, i.e., the 'Tinfoil Hat' refrain ad nauseum; because they have a gut level fear of such tactics, (an ancient survival mechanism trumped up and deliberately induced early on through childhood trauma), they exist in a near permenant state of fear of being excluded. They have great difficulty conceiving why such tactics have virtually no effect on those who have managed to break free of that particular control mechanism.
Consequently, it's very easy to sell lies to this sort; partly because they're so scrambled that they are entirely unable/unwilling to grasp that their thoughts might be regularly influenced by numerous outside sources, everything from the immediate media to seeds planted during childhood. (It takes forever to undo all of this programming in order to find oneself. Most people never even start! "I'm 100% me, baby! And my favorite soft drink is. .
--Incidentally, if you look around, you will discover that I'm not actually a stereotypical example of anything. Honestly; when was the last time you ran across the 'conspiracy theorist' stereotype in anything other than a television show? --And before you answer too quickly, you should know that I am gainfully employed, well educated, bathe regularly, have many friends and am well respected in my community.
Hmmm. .
-FL
A 500+ mph differential achieved in one second due to wind resistance? You're reaching.
Anyway, we all saw the foam fall in the video footage. And if we could see it, then it sure as heck wasn't moving at 500 mph relative to the camera!
-FL
"Three of the largest voting machine vendors in the United States have convicted criminals in high positions, according to Mercuri. "Sequoia, ES&S, and Shoup all have top people that been convicted for bribery of election officials or insider trading," Mercuri told AFP, adding, "How can it not be a criminal enterprise?" From this story.
I've looked around for the original interview, but was unable to find it. Jeff Rense runs a cool site, but he publishes everything, so it's definitely Caveat Lector in those waters.
Anybody?
-FL
Hm. I provide a thoughtful post with some valid points, and you respond with unthinking rudeness.
This clears up a great deal regarding the intelligence level of your initial post. That is, you seem to have no brain. But perhaps I am speeding to a conclusion too quickly. Let's see if you can answer the following. .
Upon what exactly do you base your belief that people never conspire to keep damaging data from the public? Could you please provide a link or something? Or is it purely intuition upon which you base your complete faith in the Corporate management, Government workers and Organized crime of the world?
-FL
It seems that at least 30% of the posts here noted just how incredibly ridiculous it was that the foam in NASA's "experiment" was being fired at 500mph, when the real piece had been traveling at an almost relative speed to the shuttle. (That is, when it parted from the Shuttle body, it stopped accelerating, and so the impact speed was that of the Shuttle's rate of acceleration over a period of about half a second. After doing all the math, I came up with an approximate speed between 3 and 14 MPH, depending on how long the foam was in free fall between separating from the Shuttle to bouncing off the wing. Luckily, Slashdotters are nothing if not good at their highschool physics and hyper-linking skills.)
What I find interesting is that this desperate attempt to kill the story came about shortly after the email was uncovered in which a NASA tech at the time said the foam piece was of no consequence.
And what is NASA hiding? (Well, actually, they're more or less in the dark, with the exception of perhaps a few insiders who suspect). But don't kid yourselves. There's definitely pressure on America's own space agency to kill this once and for good.
Why?
I know this is going to sound ridiculous, (hell, counting the negative mods I got for this post the first time around, I know some of you dislike the tone of it so much that some want it to vanish from their warm and illusory little realities but good!), --Kids, I have it on good authority that the shuttle was shot down by a space-based EM weapon in order to make a point. --That point being, "Get your ass in gear, Bush. You and your piddly nation are nothing. Do as you are told or we will not spare you. Now get WWIII underway. We don't care how stupid the lies you have to tell are. Attack Iraq, you little shit, or else." (Or something along those lines.)
Sound nuts? Just wait. You'll change your minds soon enough. (They'll see. They'll ALL see! Bwahahahaha. etc.)
So relegate me into Troll Dust again, kids. I can always re-post. (Again!) --I'll generally have more Karma than you have mod points, and when I want something said, you will damned well know it. Don't like it? Then go stuff some more gum in your ears. This predictable little reality is ending all around us. Try to take it with a little spine, for goodness sake!
-FL
It seems that at least 20% of the posts here noted just how incredibly ridiculous it was that the foam in NASA's "experiment" was being fired at 500mph, when the real piece had been traveling at an almost relative speed to the shuttle.
Interesting that this desperate attempt to kill the story came about shortly after the email was uncovered in which a NASA tech at the time said the foam piece was of no consequence.
And what is NASA hiding?
I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but kids, the ship was shot down by a space-based EM weapon in order to make a point. --That point being, "Get your ass in gear, Bush. You and your piddly nation are nothing. Do as you are told or we will not spare you. Now get WWIII underway. Attack Iraq, you little shit." (Or something along those lines.)
Sounds nuts? Think I'm irritating now? Just wait until the day when you have to admit to yourself that I was right.
-FL
Don't be foolish.
Of course all the nurses that were interviewed were not plants.
But are you trying to suggest that conspiracies don't exsit? That's moronic. You're appear to be another casualty of the social programming which has nulled the word "conspiracy" to the point where people don't believe in it regardless of any rationality. Here's what I like to do for people who are so programmed. .
Instead of saying "Conspiracy," try using instead the word, "Corruption".
They're basically the same thing. Do you not believe in Government Corruption either? Are people who complain about corruption all cranks and weirdos who should be shunned and disbelieved on principal?
I'll let you chew on that. Let's see if you have the balls to examine this bit of programming within you and de-bug it like a man, rather than lull yourself back to sleep by telling yourself comfy lies like, "I'm right and that creepy poster is just some internet crank." --That is, stick with the prvailing concensus because it's easier and more comfortable to go with the crowd than to think for yourself. Being ostricised by a bunch of weaklings is far, far worse than being a dupe.
Pathetic.
-FL
And that's exactly the point I am making. Martin is incorrect in this very assertion. --You even said it yourself. "I agree with you only insofar as you assert that people having a positive outlook on life, and attempting to make the world a happier place and to treat others justly and generously, is more likely to bring happiness to them and others than if they cynically look out only for their own selfish interests, and believe that this is the only way for them to prosper."
Exactly. People who devote themselves to cruelty and selfishness have a much LOWER success rate than those who work in the positive. ('Success' being determined by the levels of misery, wisdom and personal growth experienced by the practitioner of life.)
But I emphatically disagree with you that GRRM is peddling the cynical line, or that readers of his books come away from them more inclined than they were before to selfish egotism or despair of there being any happiness or goodness to be found in the world.
Except you just demonstrated that he does exactly this. (re, the first sentence paraphrased above).
Martin is, in a large part, preaching the same old lie. --The one which Christianity has been pushing for centuries; i.e. "You should Do The Right Thing, but you MUST expect to die on the cross a martyr because of it. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Dignity begets misery."
I have observed directly this effect among the half dozen people I know who have read Martin's work; I look at the way they approach their lives, and I see that Martin's work is merely another reinforcment of the principal. It doesn't have to be that way, and it wouldn't be if people would just figure it out. It's so simple!
Further, another common factor which astounds me every time I see it, is that the very people who praise works for having darkness within them because, "it is naive to think that there is no darkness in the real world," are the very people who deny up and down that they are being manipulated by bad people every single day. (Fluoride in the water can't be bad! Cell phones can't be bad! Corporations which own both food and drug interests can't be deliberately making people sick! The school system can't be an attempt to subvert human awareness! What America Stands For can't really be nothing more than an elaborate piece of crowd control. And on, and on. --And yet, so many people who like to see darkness in their stories call me naive because I choose instead to recognize the reality of the world itself and have no patience for it in the fiction I read. --Particularly when those, (as in Martin's case), aren't portraying darkness with the insight required to do it in a useful or responsible way.
Here's the thing; Knowledge is power; Knowledge protects. --Being aware of the darkness reduces it to something manageable. This is how misery is avoided. And this is the problem with Martin. --While he does show that naivety and wishful thinking are punishable by having your head hit hard against the wall of reality, his heros; those who are aware of the harsh realities of the world end up twisted and hurt by it. They end up cynical and stunted. --Heck, his dwarf character is the physical embodiment of this (false) principal! Now perhaps Martin himself is still in the learning process, and is still smarting from his own lessons. Perhaps, (hopefully), he will come out the other end and realize that Knowledge of Darkness does not need to twist and make one miserable! Why? Because when one embraces knowledge, you embrace not just darkness but light as well, as all are part of the whole; this is where the great masters arise from. There is even a word for it! "Ohm!" There is no need for cynicism when one embraces all, because everything is in balance, always, and this knowledge gives all the protection and power one needs to travel through life with both strong effect and grace.
-FL
Why, you set up some fall-guy-scapegoat-to-be, in some foriegn country to flood the net with crazy quantities of spam. (Easy to do. After all, the U.S. military already owns most of the name-server companies which connect your www.address to an actual I.P. number. And the CIA is renowned for setting up and turning into manipulable assets people, companies, countries and even twerps like Bin Laden.)
Then you wait for the pot to come to a boil, (which it hasn't quite yet), and then with the help of Big Brother Bill and his earth-flattening software company, introduce some seriously insane control measures. Serialized computer chips. Carnivore-style information traffic monitoring. Bottomless jail cells. You know the drill. (The net has been around for ages, but the whole spam deluge is happening now? --Right when the whole erosion of rights parade just happens to be going into high gear? The reality of this situation is staring us in the face, my friends! Cripes! If you take notes while living during these times, you'll end up with a book you can entitle, "How to take over the world in 10 easy steps. --And get away with it!".
But all of that isn't quite good enough. Nope. You want to really make sure the message hits home. Better slowly release documentaries and news stories about the evil hackers and their viruses, and how Bad Things Can Get. --Heck, you really need to drive the wedge in there but good! Damn. Better announce July 6th as, "Hack Lots Of Web Pages Day", and time it with the release of a popular film with a popular actor loaded to the gills with mind-control shmuck-stuff. (SkyNet was the result of a hacker-deployed virus? Sheesh.) Luckily, government spooks are no better at writing movie scripts than are script writers. That's probably why the whole 911 thing felt oddly reminiscent of a cheese-ball Bruce Willis flick.)
But anyway, that's how you do it. Simple. Easier even than flying jets into skyscrapers!
-FL --This is not a troll. This is just meant to provoke thought. If those thoughts anger you, try asking "Why?"
The 1% that can't will find any stimulus to follow their inclinations. That is not the fault of a writer.
It is good that there are writers that expose us to dark worlds, that way we can play with darkness in the safe container of our own imagination.
Reverse those percentages, and I'd agree with you whole heartedly. Anybody who has a regular day-job, a mortgage, and a die-hard irrational belief in either a) A religion, or b) Skepticism/Atheism has been successfully advertised at without even realizing it. The only option is to not check one of the provided options on the test card. The people giving the test don't want you to pass.
I mentioned Joseph Goebbles before. He understood these things, and knew how to use them very effectively. Advertising and mind-control have only gotten more clever since those days, and the biggest trick pulled off is lulling people into thinking that they are too smart to be affected by behavior modification. One of the most difficult barriers to overcome, (that of the searcher who has learned to regularly subject his beliefs to harsh self-criticism in order to find any gaffs or errors), opens up wide when you lull people into a false sense of self-control. When was the last time you sifted through the workings of your own head looking for inconsistencies? --Did you rationalize and feel better, or did you look the error in the face and go through the painful work required to correct things?
It's a sad truth that people tend to be far more easily fooled by political bullshit after they have had some university schooling. --They see University as a big stamp of 'Smartness', absorb without question the information spat at them by 'professors' and allow their egos to become larger in being able to repeat this info with 'authority'.
This is not to say that there aren't some very smart people in higher education. I've met a few of them. But students tend to NEVER question what they are told. --And this is a direct result of the way the system is shaped. Unquestioning obedience to authorities, and to prevailing group-opinion.
Now if you happened to have read Martin's book and thought, "Okay. This is good writing, but Martin has a very dark and biased view of reality which only works because he is imperiously forcing the story mechanics to demonstrate his one-sided view of reality which is in no way an accurate depiction of how things really work," then you passed that particular test and you can claim to perhaps exist within that 1%. But go read the comments on this site. You'll note that perhaps only two people voiced this sort of reaction, while nearly everybody else voiced nothing but unmitigated approval of, and more importantly, a sort of sympathetic resonance with Martin's work.
-FL
Maybe you should talk to some health care workers about how "nothing was done". You know, the ones who put in countless hours + overtime working to contain an unknown disease. They put themselves & their families at risk day after day for whiney little bitches like you. You should be grateful.
Hm. So included in that "A for Effort" would also be quarentine orders regularly ignored by health care professionals during the first two weeks? --And SARS carriers being sent home because the doctors didn't believe that patient conditions were anything more than common cold symptoms?
Look, I realize that the medical community did get serious, and that they worked diligently with the information they had available. But I'm sorry. It was too little, too late, even for them. --You have to remember, that when things like this spin out of control, which it did, the powers that be have to create a convincing illusion, not just for the public, but also for the workers within the infrastructure. They did a pretty good job, too.
So, do you actually know any health care workers? What did you hear?
I'll share if you do.
-FL
Sheesh.
Now the fact that the West isn't reeling from a sweeping plague is interesting, isn't it? Very little was done differently here than in China, except here it all turned out okay, didn't it? Nothing bad ever really happens. Reality just keeps on tugging along, so there's no point in being too concerned. There's always a job in the morning and always a television at night.
--The cause was Chinese spitting and bad sewage? Get real. While the Chinese may spit, and while their sewage systems may suck, (neither of which I am certain are entirely true. Never seen a Chinese spit in any media until now), it's still just PR spin doctoring. If doctors and nurses were dropping like flies and even WHO personell were dying. . , if people taking the right precautions, wearing the right plastic, washing their hands between patients, (and not spitting on the hospital floors). . , if these people were still getting sick, then Toronto should be a toxic plague zone right now.
Have you seen the under-funded, over-strained Toronto public transit system on a hot day during rush hour? --I was there during the height of the SARS thing, and I can tell you first hand that there was some serious fluid exchange going on down there in those nasty tunnels. --And in those hermetically sealed work-places with too little air-cycling. Do you know how easily disease spreads? People get the flu for a reason. You can't stop shit like that; not after nearly three weeks of lax measures and people ignoring quarantine orders. People only started taking things seriously when it was essentially WAY too late. Disease vectors multiply geometrically, folks. You basically can't staunch those kinds of flows after more than ten days of unlimited spread.
China needed military measures, mass panic and a near total shut-down of their economy to get things under some semblance of control. But Toronto, day-dreaming through the whole event with little more than some newscasts showing ambulance drivers wearing plastic suits to make people think that 'Something Was Being Done', was able to stop SARS cold after three weeks of doing virtually nothing? Give Me A Break.
Toronto should be a big red glowing dot on some military map right now, and it would be if somebody hadn't stepped in.
Can you say, "Friendly Fire"?
They don't make 'em if they can't cure 'em. (Man, and when they finally piss off China enough, the ant will be stamped by the elephant. I'm willing to bet that the US military doesn't have enough bullets for every Chinese. Do you have any idea how big the standing army is in China? --Before a draft?)
Too bad it's all a stage production. The masters of China and the masters of the US are the same. It's all a light show, folks! And SARS, (in the West, anyway), was Hamlet fumbling his lines. But the audience doesn't care. Nobody knows their Shakespear anymore.
Of course, I'm just a crank. I don't know anything. Move along citizen.
-FL
Please read Tuf Voyaging, for example, and think again.
I read the first hundred pages of the next in the Game of Thrones series, (but cannot recall the title.) I got very much fed up with it and had to stop.
It is possible that his other works are not in the same vein, and if so, then I was innacurate in using the term, 'his books'. --Although, in this case, I was only referring to the ones he has most recently written; those in this particular and popular series.
Let's be realistic, intelligent people doesn't "stop to be good an honest" just because the characters of the book are bad and vicious, and they win.
That is a matter of opinion, and one which I disagree with. I believe that the media is in fact VERY good at reflecting and re-inforcing social patterns. Joseph Goebbels would have agreed with me, I think.
The greatest lie ever told by advertisers is that advertising doesn't work.
And, could you make your argument without personal disqualifications ? Thanks.
I call it as I see it. Anybody who writes from such a grim place has clearly lost his way. Hence, 'Loser' is very appropriate, I think.
-FL
Because I am dying to know
No you're not. It sounds to me as though you are very firmly decided on how you want to percieve the universe. When you get tired of being limited, (possibly several lives from now), then you might want to know, and only then you will be in a position to hear the answers.
It's not my job to interrupt your current path. Heck, if I manage to upset the trajectory chosen by your higher self and mess up the lessons you've designated for yourself this life, why. . , that's bad Karma, and I'd have to pay for it later.
But of course, that's all nonsense. Today, I am just a fool on the web.
Ciao.
-FL
My life has been described as Lucky. I have been accused of being a 'Joy Junkie'. I have been sneered at for not being miserable. --For having 'unrealistic' expectations of the world, (and despised when those expectations come true.)
Now, I am not a proponant of the whole, "You create your own reality," camp of Budhist philosophy. --Yes, on a deep level, we DO create our own reality, but I certainly don't know how to tweek those strings, and nobody I have ever met has been able to either. (If it's winter outside, no amount of wishing or meditating is going to change that.)
However. . , that being said, I absolutely believe that one can color their corner of reality, affecting the prevailing winds of 'chance' and the collective perceptions and attitudes of others in how they interact with reality. --And I believe that this kind of habitual approach to life creates a cascade effect over 'time', which DOES change the way in which the world works. Butterfly wings and all that.
Story tellers like George R. Martin are mis-directed and dangerous in that they are so agile in portraying their own dismal views of reality that their readers can be swept up into such dark perspectives and through this, change their own world for the worse.
How evil or good our world is, is largely determined by what people believe the prevailing social norms are and how they act them out. Yes, there are bad people in power who know how to manipulate. But this is a result of social programming and ignorance on behalf of the people; it has nothing to do with any nonsense belief that "bad things sometimes happen to good people and that's just the way it is." --Because it simply isn't true; the universe is nowhere near that random. Karma works. --But because people have been led away from this sort of awareness and pushed into a collective head-space where misery and chaos are the norms, then OF COURSE it's going to appear that losers like George R. Martin have the most accurate line on 'reality'.
Books like Martin's I find disturbing for many reasons.
-FL
I thought Martin's craft was flawless. He's a damned clever story teller. It's his stunted and cynical view of life which I absolutely could not swallow! Good people in his books are routinely punished for being good, beauty is reviled and destroyed, decay is demonstrated to be the only natural course of nature, people with positive view-points are savagely dis-abused of their notions, and his sexualization of pre-teen girls was entirely unsavory. Martin clearly exists within and writes to us from a very dark reality. Fine. His problem. --What I find frightening is that so many people seem to resonate with it in such enthusiastic terms.
How evil or good our world is, is largely determined by what people believe the prevailing social norms are and how they act them out. Books like Martin's I find disturbing for many reasons.
-FL
Just for the sake of redundancy. . . I clearly know things that you don't. That makes me stronger than you. I am under no obligation to offer my info up for free, but I did anyway. If you don't want to believe me, or investigate my claims, or put them on 'hold' until other/better info comes along into your life. --If you don't even want to be polite. . . Well, fine. That's your problem. I'm still the one who knows more than you. I'm the one with the advantage.
I could prove my knowledge to you, it would be difficult, because you want to see easy websites whereas my knowledge comes from direct experience which cannot be 'hyperlinked', but it could be done. However, it would take a lot of effort and you're acting like an undeserving ass who values and defends his own ignorance. --Who hasn't figured out that society is set up in this way precisely to keep people from advancing.
So enjoy your stagnation. I'm that dot moving away from you on the horizon.
By the way. I do work in fiction.
-FL
The culture of skepticism is, I have concluded, one of the most amazingly powerful and effective control mechanisms currently in existence!
Follow along if you will. .
1. I don't care how stupid you want to remain. It's not my job to prove anything to you. If I do, it is because I am feeling gracious and generous. NOBODY automatically deserves convincing evidence EVER. You don't win a prize for staying ignorant.
2. I worked in the magazine industry for several years. I know what I'm talking about. You haven't so you don't. If something in what I say seems fishy to you, then look it up or shut up. Or at the very least, ask nicely for me to provide further info.
3. The internet is not the be-all end-all in evidence. You want to know how the magazine industry works? Go to your local bookstore and ask them. Get on the telephone and call up a magazine distributor and ask them
Gad, I hope you're just a troll, because nobody should be that stupid!
-FL
Man, there's a lot of it out there today!
Magazines are destroyed if they don't sell; the covers returned to the publisher for a refund. So the bookstore doesn't lose a dime, unlike if an actual product was stolen. As such, this IS not the same as shoplifting. The only money being 'lost' is that of a potential sale, which probably wouldn't happen anyway, since the 'thief' is clearly not concerned with the content of the article, (since you can't hope to read comprehensive text from a 120 x 120 dpi JPG image.)
As for the publisher, point of purchase sales, except in the cases of maybe the 5 or 6 leading magaaines, don't account for ANY significant amount of income. The publishers make virtually ALL their money from the advertisers. So they have no reason to care! --Heck, the simple fact that ANYBODY is bothering to leaf through their rag looking for pictures of dresses to scan, should make them happy.
All in all, this sounds like just another dumb excuse to clamp down on society with ever-increasing thumbscrews of social control.
Thank goodness people are wise enough to impeach stupid and dangerous leaders.
-FL
A very large charge built up rather more quickly than the experiment designers had imagined and the wire melted and broke.
Anybody remember this?
-FL