Well said. However, I would add that there is a flip side to the equation.
The internet has ALSO allowed for information sharing which has until now been impossible at the rates, speed and depth currently available. There are channels of information and networked communication now instantly available which allow for a very high level of awareness for those seeking it. Citizen journalism is nothing to sneeze at, and being able to hash out subjects on forums like this one, having people call my bullshit and point me at truth has been invaluable to me. The web offers itself as a fantastic crucible if you want to use it that way. But I agree; the pull of mind-wasting entertainment on the Web IS ridiculously strong.
Though, personal choice in how the medium is used is important to consider. I don't know that people would be any different without it. In fact, in terms of strict biological/behavioral interference I'd put more blame on cell phones and WiFi devices than the content for numbing awareness and fuzzing people out; for making the poor choices easier to feel satisfied with.
The medium IS the message, a wise man once observed.
Nice strawman. Come back and play with the adults when you can make a point and not result in logical fallacies.
Where's the fallacy?
He's just pointing out that the two governments are persecuting people for reasons which seem unfair to huge numbers of people on both sides of the planet. He even explained his reasoning, citing different cultural approaches to societal management. I don't think he was trying to mislead anybody.
That being said, I wouldn't want to live under Chinese law, (but then I don't want to live under our government either. The options are growing more thin by the month). But that's not the point.
The point is that this article was being presented with the intent to propagandize the public and ratchet up angry division between populations. It's a good idea to remind ourselves that our own side is just as full of shit before allowing our emotions to be manipulated.
Yes, the different populations of the planet have different behavior sets, but that doesn't mean we need to fight or even fail to get along with each other. Anybody selling war is a shit-head.
This guy has 20 years of experience of teaching what he wants and presenting his students with standardized exams. I am glad this happened, now he can test on what he teaches as opposed to testing on material that he forgot to cover. It will make him a better teacher and his class a better class to take.
You're being very charitable here. I think it's far more likely that he'll pretend he was right all along and, as such, he doesn't need to put in the excruciating effort to change anything about himself or his methods.
As you pointed out, he's little better than his students. He just pulled up a bit of old work from an archive. That he feels justified in calling students cheaters for typing a couple of search parameters into Google is unrealistic.
By not generating a fresh exam, he's basically not doing his job.
Uh uh - villain and villein both come from villa, it's true, but it's the latter that was a category of feudal tenant land lessee (usually obliged to provide some hours of work or some measure of produce to the feudal lord lessor, and bound to the estate for the length of the lease, but otherwise free) while villain is used in the sense of someone living in a villa -- a boorish rustic person.
Heck, I was just quoting trivia which was shared with me by another language geek, so I'm afraid I'm not informed enough to do anything but say, "Really? Interesting! From one perspective that actually makes more sense. I figured it would have been the peasantry who would have been telling myths and stories about evil guys with thin mustaches, and why would they cast themselves in the role?"
But the point is that somebody responded with something interesting. Being a geek is FUN because it's about really getting into a subject, largely for the sheer fascination value of it.
Of course I've seen the behavior you speak of. Your conclusion remains a completely unsupported and completely retarded leap of faith. If you have seen this behavior and come to the conclusion that they -- because of genetics and society -- "fear trust and love" it's because you see only what you want to see and while you may have 'spent a lot of time' with these people, you haven't actually met them as people.
That feeling you're working from right now is called, "Alarmed Denial". The things I'm saying aren't allowed to be true because of what they imply and how that would damage your world view and your accompanying emotional state.
The logic is simple: Love and trust open one to attack in the group behavior you say that you have seen for yourself. The people we're talking about adopt behaviors which demonstrate avoidance and a shutting down of love and trust in order to avoid those attacks. This is entirely based on fear, which is entirely based on survival instincts. That's inescapable. Sorry. Unless you re-define all the words differently, then you're stuck with this conclusion.
Secondly, there are ONLY two factors available which teach these kinds of broadly observed social behaviors; Society and Genetics. That's it. Those are the only two choices. You can pick one over the other or vice/versa, nature versus nurture and all that, and that's your call. I pick both because I don't see how you can have one without the other; logic says that the symbiosis and interdependency are impossible to avoid.
If I've missed something, then do please enlighten me. But I've gone over and over this stuff looking for every way out, and I have found that the ONLY way to avoid these conclusions is to burrow into the comfortable delusion that, "All men were created equal". Sorry, but only cowards and fools cleave to illusions.
I would never argue with a fifteen year old who can use the word "cogent".
So you'd only argue with somebody who isn't capable of arguing back?
Careful; that's exactly how stupid ideas as evidenced in the OP's comments sprout wings and take flight into the winds of fancy. If you can't hold your own in a written debate, it probably means your ideas are junk.
It's not that big a surprise, but it's even less of a surprise that an adolescent would have convinced themselves that they have a superior understanding.
It doesn't take that much work to convince oneself of having a superior understanding. Any fool can do that, as the original poster neatly demonstrated. What DOES take work is being right; that requires transcending a bunch of automatic behaviors including selfishness and other fear-based emotions. I've never met a self-styled conservative who could counter even the most basic points I presented. (The bank question being at the top of that list). So they reduce themselves to ad hom bullshit and other stupid evasions and self-delusions.
Anyway.., anybody with a nice low UID like yours ought to know what ad hom implies about an argument and the failure to address it.
I suppose it shouldn't come as any surprise that even a mere adolescent can have a more solid and cogent understanding of reality than the average myopic self-centered fart.
Leaping from there to the square on your 'Jump to Conclusions' mat labeled "they fear trust and love" is hilarious in that insulting-but-okay-because-its-so-retarded way.
It's not universal by any means, but I've spent a lot of time with different groups of Chinese Asians in a variety of different circumstances and honestly, the top-down pecking order structure is always a shade away from organized crime standards where one's guard must be up at all times even among, 'friends'. It's enough to make me want to kiss the Western Earth beneath my feet. If you haven't seen the kind of behavior I'm talking about, it can only be because you haven't looked.
It's a combination of genetics, a few thousand years of social programming and I think language as well. The words and methods we use to learn to write and speak wire our brains from a young age. And yeah, that's racist but it's also true. --It doesn't mean I hate anybody for it and it certainly doesn't mean that people can't choose against their genetic and social programming, (the amazing thing about souls is that they are very powerful in this regard), but it takes both awareness and will-power to step beyond one's mechanical nature. Very few people are capable of that no matter what land mass they happen to live on.
A geek is a side show freak that eats live animals or non food objects as part of his/her act.
It takes an etymology geek to know such a thing.;-)
Side-track tangent: "Villain" was originally a word meaning, "Servant". (In the stories told among the privileged long ago, the bad guys were the powerless who got fed up being slaves and attempt to usurp the land owners and property holders who effectively own them. -Which makes Superman a tool and Batman a hypocrite).
Language evolves, and opposing it is like trying to fight the wind.
This kind of pressure, even falsely leveled, isn't necessarily a bad thing as it keeps the decision makers aware that they are being watched with narrowed eyes. Encourages them to not give life to the stupid ideas wandering around inside their skulls. Because once those stupid ideas find a voice, their egos will not allow them to recant. Once said, all stupid ideas must be defended; it is the retard way!
So while it may not be the best kind of journalism, it did do it's job. Kudos! This is why the young and brash often end up being the gate-keepers of sanity. Read up on how the next generation of youth, (those who came along after the Hitler Youth), in WWII Germany did a great deal to undermine the Nazis and lead Germany out of the darkness.
It's also one of the reasons I think our own youth are being drugged both via food and anti-depressants, dumbed down with iTech, video games and TV. The PTB know that the young souls are the ones with the power and grist to upset their evil schemes, so they attacked full-on leaving our kids so dazed and vacant. Hopefully a few of the brighter ones will click-to and step out of the drug daze to save our sorry asses!
Seriously; the subconscious tries to recreate and understand itself through art by creating something to look at and evaluate with the senses, thus giving the intellect something to latch onto. The so-called, "Mirror" people talk about when discussing art. It's SO true.
Japan and China are hyper-controlled societies, people take orders and cram themselves into the pre-designated roles with great facility, even obsessive drive.
I remember watching a video of a punk rock convention in Japan. There was a lot of dyed hair and studded leather. But the most astonishing part was this one shot where a couple hundred "Punk Rockers" were all doing an angry head-bangy dance, while all perfectly lined up, toes to a chalk line on the ground they were not supposed to cross as per the rules of their punk rock convention.
That said it all.
This is why, I think, when the big culling comes about, the last populations which will be allowed to live (in serfdom) will be Asian DNA groups. They've been genetically designed to obey better and repress each other better, while fearing openness, trust and love.
That robot video gave me chills in a very bad way.
The tax payers want THEIR money to be spent collectively on THEM. -Not put into the pockets of military contractors and financial scam-artists, (banks). But refusing to get ripped off is somehow bad? Is somehow extorting the tax payer?
So-called "Conservative" thinkers like to believe they're good and responsible with numbers, yet never seem capable of doing the math on just how badly they're being ripped off. They don't even understand the basics of debt creation through money lending and how the whole thing, in every industrialized nation, is a deliberate con job established from the basement up. And if they do, -and this is the amazing part- they utterly fail to extrapolate what that means in any larger context.
The fact that those dots are difficult for you to connect means that YOU'RE the robot who has been successfully programmed to knee-jerk on any issue which sounds even slightly like Socialism. And for goodness sake! Fear of socialism? Get real! That anybody is still obsessing over single moms getting a 'free ride' is unbelievable. Your lizard buttons are being pushed with great finesse. Do you want crayons with that? The human brain has evolved the wetware to think beyond those simple and limiting paradigms. People are not muskrats and fish, and yet whole political movements encourage them to return to and embrace the laws of the jungle as though the whole bother of evolution was one big mistake. Psychopaths like that kind of thinking because they don't HAVE the wetware necessary for compassion, and they can't survive in a world where it's not all pure competition without any sort of balance. Fuck Psychopaths. They're responsible for the economic melt-down and the gulf disaster and the wars. If you can't see that, then you've either been conned or you're sporting your very own brain deficiencies.
You need to do more than just unplug from your TV. Hell, if you're still watching the Beeb, even in disgust, then you are miles away from your first clue.
Google, I would argue, is not a true monopoly as I define things.
Google still requires public assent, ("We all like this option and so we give it all the power!"). People can still collectively choose something different. Google, however, is buying into the infrastructure which makes it possible to choose and become informed. If they were to use those muscles to quash competition in subversive ways, and if they were successful at this, then they would become a monopoly and we would be owned.
People have the conceit to believe that large human populations cannot be contained, programmed and controlled. The Free Market only works if we are free, but in many ways, we are not.
The interesting part is that we are made up of collections of set and predictable behavioral reactions. It takes awareness and will power to break those reaction cycles, but most people, and I mean nearly everybody, never attains the self-awareness necessary to accomplish this. The Ego gets in the way. People THINK they achieve self-awareness and self-determination, but really, their reactions are not only predictable, but easy to control without their being aware that they are only choosing within a set of pre-determined and controlled boundaries.
The American two-party political system as controlled by the global banking elite is an example of this kind of illusory "free" market. There are options within it, but really, to break out of its primary bounds is very difficult. -Especially when people are so totally programmed to not ever question it or even see it. The control level extends right down to our basic beliefs about reality and the soul.
Many of the economics specialists and students quoting their knowledge here are, in fact, caught in a type of semantic control. The system will not teach you that you are slaves. It will teach you to be happy within the system and to not see beyond it.
You cannot have a monopoly without a group who are monopolized.
So the question is, do you mind being somebody's property? And if not, do you have the ability/awareness necessary to move out from beneath that monopoly?
Where it gets dangerous is when said monopoly manipulates your awareness and ability to seek something different.
I'd avoid any drug smuggled into the youth scene by the Israeli intelligence community.
When I dug into the subject, the nearest thing I found to the same effects on brain cells that MDMA has was Polio's effect on nerve endings throughout the body. I think we're going to start seeing some really messed up people incapable of producing serotonin when they hit their 50's. I can't begin to imagine how crappy that would be!
Better solution: Don't get conned into joining the army. Don't support/turn a blind eye to psychopathic leaders who like to invent wars or who pressure populations into war frenzies. A little awareness on everybody's part would go a long way.
Instead, we're playing Tetris and a host of other video games which eases the immediate stress and suffering which in turn makes it easier for the psychopaths to ratchet up the pressure, requiring even more numbing distractions.
But of course, even if these problems were solved, there would still be trauma. And while short term relief solutions are useful at mitigating and providing coping mechanisms, the long-term process of repairing and strengthening the mind is the real way to go, I would think.
Hello my friend FL. I am off topic, but i have a question... is there a way in slashdot to communicate directly with a user? I am interested to have an email of yours, if it is OK with you, but i cant find a way to send you a direct message. Is there a way for us to exchange EMAILS?
I'm sorry, but that's not going to happen. Hell, I seed to mislead. Too many creepy crawlies around here to not take appropriate precautions.
I'm generally amazed when a button actually DOES work. (I lived in a building where the elevator doors instantly responded. That was great.)
When buttons do nothing, I just fume at the city or whatever agency I happen to live under the management of.
But Placebo?
Far too much is attributed to that effect. I think there must be a sliding scale of environmental awareness where some people are a lot more easily fooled than others. Heck, I know this to be true. I wonder if perhaps those who cry, "Placebo Effect!" are among those who are more easily fooled and thus have a hard time working out what reality is actually doing most of the time. Perhaps this is why science is so important to them? Their instincts are poor and thus they need a reliable system of reality reading, not to fall back on or use in conjunction with, but as their primary guide to existence.
those that are debt addicted suffer, those that are not are happy.
Everybody is 'debt addicted'. Even you, though it sounds like your vision might be too narrow to recognize it.
Money creates debt through its very existence. It's impossible for crippling systematic debt not to accrue. That's just how it is. It sounds like you've managed to be among the small percentage able to dance a little faster than everybody else on the shrinking number of ice cubes, but as the whole thing slides under it will have been wise to make sure you weren't too smug or Darwinian in your thinking to have created bonds of trust and support among the members of your community.
I think this is just a ripening up of the American public for Palin and the Tea-Nazis to come crash the party in two years time. It's all just part of the show and Obama is just the latest bit-part player.
I think they need those protections, because pirating can hurt the book market a lot.
See, that's where you messed up. You're doing the same kind of 'thinking' an audience does when they observe a magician's act. It's a trick.
Creators were making little to no money from media sales long before wide-spread pirating came along. This has been true ever since the dawn of industrialized mass-reproduction of media. Publishers, editors, printers, binders, distributors all get paid, but the authors frequently get swindled. It's an old, old story and so-called piracy, (I prefer the word, "sharing") has little to do with it.
Nothing has changed except that greedy people are frustrated when others share.
Interestingly, when people embrace sharing, authors and musicians get paid. -Because money is shared as well! Those who hate sharing and want to build a system of forced payment will, when not forced themselves, fight to not share with authors and creators.
This only demonstrates that there are enough selfish, sociopathic creeps out there (of both sexes), to shape behavioral bell-curves for entire populations.
No surprise there.
Anybody here ever snap awake with a sudden wave of panic to the fact that you're locked up in a cage packed full of mindless, wild animals masquerading as human and there's not a damned thing you can do about it other than hope you can distract them long enough to avoid getting your jugular ripped open with their zombie fangs? Yes? Then you probably don't fit into that above-mentioned bell-curve.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said. However, I would add that there is a flip side to the equation.
The internet has ALSO allowed for information sharing which has until now been impossible at the rates, speed and depth currently available. There are channels of information and networked communication now instantly available which allow for a very high level of awareness for those seeking it. Citizen journalism is nothing to sneeze at, and being able to hash out subjects on forums like this one, having people call my bullshit and point me at truth has been invaluable to me. The web offers itself as a fantastic crucible if you want to use it that way. But I agree; the pull of mind-wasting entertainment on the Web IS ridiculously strong.
Though, personal choice in how the medium is used is important to consider. I don't know that people would be any different without it. In fact, in terms of strict biological/behavioral interference I'd put more blame on cell phones and WiFi devices than the content for numbing awareness and fuzzing people out; for making the poor choices easier to feel satisfied with.
The medium IS the message, a wise man once observed.
-FL
Nice strawman. Come back and play with the adults when you can make a point and not result in logical fallacies.
Where's the fallacy?
He's just pointing out that the two governments are persecuting people for reasons which seem unfair to huge numbers of people on both sides of the planet. He even explained his reasoning, citing different cultural approaches to societal management. I don't think he was trying to mislead anybody.
That being said, I wouldn't want to live under Chinese law, (but then I don't want to live under our government either. The options are growing more thin by the month). But that's not the point.
The point is that this article was being presented with the intent to propagandize the public and ratchet up angry division between populations. It's a good idea to remind ourselves that our own side is just as full of shit before allowing our emotions to be manipulated.
Yes, the different populations of the planet have different behavior sets, but that doesn't mean we need to fight or even fail to get along with each other. Anybody selling war is a shit-head.
-FL
This guy has 20 years of experience of teaching what he wants and presenting his students with standardized exams. I am glad this happened, now he can test on what he teaches as opposed to testing on material that he forgot to cover. It will make him a better teacher and his class a better class to take.
You're being very charitable here. I think it's far more likely that he'll pretend he was right all along and, as such, he doesn't need to put in the excruciating effort to change anything about himself or his methods.
As you pointed out, he's little better than his students. He just pulled up a bit of old work from an archive. That he feels justified in calling students cheaters for typing a couple of search parameters into Google is unrealistic.
By not generating a fresh exam, he's basically not doing his job.
-FL
Uh uh - villain and villein both come from villa, it's true, but it's the latter that was a category of feudal tenant land lessee (usually obliged to provide some hours of work or some measure of produce to the feudal lord lessor, and bound to the estate for the length of the lease, but otherwise free) while villain is used in the sense of someone living in a villa -- a boorish rustic person.
Heck, I was just quoting trivia which was shared with me by another language geek, so I'm afraid I'm not informed enough to do anything but say, "Really? Interesting! From one perspective that actually makes more sense. I figured it would have been the peasantry who would have been telling myths and stories about evil guys with thin mustaches, and why would they cast themselves in the role?"
But the point is that somebody responded with something interesting. Being a geek is FUN because it's about really getting into a subject, largely for the sheer fascination value of it.
"Geek" is a great word!
I wonder what Wayne and Stark would have to say?
-FL
Of course I've seen the behavior you speak of. Your conclusion remains a completely unsupported and completely retarded leap of faith. If you have seen this behavior and come to the conclusion that they -- because of genetics and society -- "fear trust and love" it's because you see only what you want to see and while you may have 'spent a lot of time' with these people, you haven't actually met them as people.
That feeling you're working from right now is called, "Alarmed Denial". The things I'm saying aren't allowed to be true because of what they imply and how that would damage your world view and your accompanying emotional state.
The logic is simple: Love and trust open one to attack in the group behavior you say that you have seen for yourself. The people we're talking about adopt behaviors which demonstrate avoidance and a shutting down of love and trust in order to avoid those attacks. This is entirely based on fear, which is entirely based on survival instincts. That's inescapable. Sorry. Unless you re-define all the words differently, then you're stuck with this conclusion.
Secondly, there are ONLY two factors available which teach these kinds of broadly observed social behaviors; Society and Genetics. That's it. Those are the only two choices. You can pick one over the other or vice/versa, nature versus nurture and all that, and that's your call. I pick both because I don't see how you can have one without the other; logic says that the symbiosis and interdependency are impossible to avoid.
If I've missed something, then do please enlighten me. But I've gone over and over this stuff looking for every way out, and I have found that the ONLY way to avoid these conclusions is to burrow into the comfortable delusion that, "All men were created equal". Sorry, but only cowards and fools cleave to illusions.
-FL
I would never argue with a fifteen year old who can use the word "cogent".
So you'd only argue with somebody who isn't capable of arguing back?
Careful; that's exactly how stupid ideas as evidenced in the OP's comments sprout wings and take flight into the winds of fancy. If you can't hold your own in a written debate, it probably means your ideas are junk.
-FL
It's not that big a surprise, but it's even less of a surprise that an adolescent would have convinced themselves that they have a superior understanding.
It doesn't take that much work to convince oneself of having a superior understanding. Any fool can do that, as the original poster neatly demonstrated. What DOES take work is being right; that requires transcending a bunch of automatic behaviors including selfishness and other fear-based emotions. I've never met a self-styled conservative who could counter even the most basic points I presented. (The bank question being at the top of that list). So they reduce themselves to ad hom bullshit and other stupid evasions and self-delusions.
Anyway.., anybody with a nice low UID like yours ought to know what ad hom implies about an argument and the failure to address it.
Sheesh.
-FL
What are you, fifteen?
Yes. That's exactly what I am. I am fifteen.
I suppose it shouldn't come as any surprise that even a mere adolescent can have a more solid and cogent understanding of reality than the average myopic self-centered fart.
-FL
Leaping from there to the square on your 'Jump to Conclusions' mat labeled "they fear trust and love" is hilarious in that insulting-but-okay-because-its-so-retarded way.
It's not universal by any means, but I've spent a lot of time with different groups of Chinese Asians in a variety of different circumstances and honestly, the top-down pecking order structure is always a shade away from organized crime standards where one's guard must be up at all times even among, 'friends'. It's enough to make me want to kiss the Western Earth beneath my feet. If you haven't seen the kind of behavior I'm talking about, it can only be because you haven't looked.
It's a combination of genetics, a few thousand years of social programming and I think language as well. The words and methods we use to learn to write and speak wire our brains from a young age. And yeah, that's racist but it's also true. --It doesn't mean I hate anybody for it and it certainly doesn't mean that people can't choose against their genetic and social programming, (the amazing thing about souls is that they are very powerful in this regard), but it takes both awareness and will-power to step beyond one's mechanical nature. Very few people are capable of that no matter what land mass they happen to live on.
How's my performance keeping up?
-FL
A geek is a side show freak that eats live animals or non food objects as part of his/her act.
It takes an etymology geek to know such a thing. ;-)
Side-track tangent: "Villain" was originally a word meaning, "Servant". (In the stories told among the privileged long ago, the bad guys were the powerless who got fed up being slaves and attempt to usurp the land owners and property holders who effectively own them. -Which makes Superman a tool and Batman a hypocrite).
Language evolves, and opposing it is like trying to fight the wind.
-FL
Mod up.
Also. . ,
This kind of pressure, even falsely leveled, isn't necessarily a bad thing as it keeps the decision makers aware that they are being watched with narrowed eyes. Encourages them to not give life to the stupid ideas wandering around inside their skulls. Because once those stupid ideas find a voice, their egos will not allow them to recant. Once said, all stupid ideas must be defended; it is the retard way!
So while it may not be the best kind of journalism, it did do it's job. Kudos! This is why the young and brash often end up being the gate-keepers of sanity. Read up on how the next generation of youth, (those who came along after the Hitler Youth), in WWII Germany did a great deal to undermine the Nazis and lead Germany out of the darkness.
It's also one of the reasons I think our own youth are being drugged both via food and anti-depressants, dumbed down with iTech, video games and TV. The PTB know that the young souls are the ones with the power and grist to upset their evil schemes, so they attacked full-on leaving our kids so dazed and vacant. Hopefully a few of the brighter ones will click-to and step out of the drug daze to save our sorry asses!
-FL
Art emulates life.
Seriously; the subconscious tries to recreate and understand itself through art by creating something to look at and evaluate with the senses, thus giving the intellect something to latch onto. The so-called, "Mirror" people talk about when discussing art. It's SO true.
Japan and China are hyper-controlled societies, people take orders and cram themselves into the pre-designated roles with great facility, even obsessive drive.
I remember watching a video of a punk rock convention in Japan. There was a lot of dyed hair and studded leather. But the most astonishing part was this one shot where a couple hundred "Punk Rockers" were all doing an angry head-bangy dance, while all perfectly lined up, toes to a chalk line on the ground they were not supposed to cross as per the rules of their punk rock convention.
That said it all.
This is why, I think, when the big culling comes about, the last populations which will be allowed to live (in serfdom) will be Asian DNA groups. They've been genetically designed to obey better and repress each other better, while fearing openness, trust and love.
That robot video gave me chills in a very bad way.
-FL
Gimme a break. What are you? A Turing Machine?
The tax payers want THEIR money to be spent collectively on THEM. -Not put into the pockets of military contractors and financial scam-artists, (banks). But refusing to get ripped off is somehow bad? Is somehow extorting the tax payer?
So-called "Conservative" thinkers like to believe they're good and responsible with numbers, yet never seem capable of doing the math on just how badly they're being ripped off. They don't even understand the basics of debt creation through money lending and how the whole thing, in every industrialized nation, is a deliberate con job established from the basement up. And if they do, -and this is the amazing part- they utterly fail to extrapolate what that means in any larger context.
The fact that those dots are difficult for you to connect means that YOU'RE the robot who has been successfully programmed to knee-jerk on any issue which sounds even slightly like Socialism. And for goodness sake! Fear of socialism? Get real! That anybody is still obsessing over single moms getting a 'free ride' is unbelievable. Your lizard buttons are being pushed with great finesse. Do you want crayons with that? The human brain has evolved the wetware to think beyond those simple and limiting paradigms. People are not muskrats and fish, and yet whole political movements encourage them to return to and embrace the laws of the jungle as though the whole bother of evolution was one big mistake. Psychopaths like that kind of thinking because they don't HAVE the wetware necessary for compassion, and they can't survive in a world where it's not all pure competition without any sort of balance. Fuck Psychopaths. They're responsible for the economic melt-down and the gulf disaster and the wars. If you can't see that, then you've either been conned or you're sporting your very own brain deficiencies.
You need to do more than just unplug from your TV. Hell, if you're still watching the Beeb, even in disgust, then you are miles away from your first clue.
Unplug, re-boot, re-think.
-FL
Google, I would argue, is not a true monopoly as I define things.
Google still requires public assent, ("We all like this option and so we give it all the power!"). People can still collectively choose something different. Google, however, is buying into the infrastructure which makes it possible to choose and become informed. If they were to use those muscles to quash competition in subversive ways, and if they were successful at this, then they would become a monopoly and we would be owned.
People have the conceit to believe that large human populations cannot be contained, programmed and controlled. The Free Market only works if we are free, but in many ways, we are not.
The interesting part is that we are made up of collections of set and predictable behavioral reactions. It takes awareness and will power to break those reaction cycles, but most people, and I mean nearly everybody, never attains the self-awareness necessary to accomplish this. The Ego gets in the way. People THINK they achieve self-awareness and self-determination, but really, their reactions are not only predictable, but easy to control without their being aware that they are only choosing within a set of pre-determined and controlled boundaries.
The American two-party political system as controlled by the global banking elite is an example of this kind of illusory "free" market. There are options within it, but really, to break out of its primary bounds is very difficult. -Especially when people are so totally programmed to not ever question it or even see it. The control level extends right down to our basic beliefs about reality and the soul.
Many of the economics specialists and students quoting their knowledge here are, in fact, caught in a type of semantic control. The system will not teach you that you are slaves. It will teach you to be happy within the system and to not see beyond it.
-FL
You cannot have a monopoly without a group who are monopolized.
So the question is, do you mind being somebody's property? And if not, do you have the ability/awareness necessary to move out from beneath that monopoly?
Where it gets dangerous is when said monopoly manipulates your awareness and ability to seek something different.
-FL
Jeezuz. MDMA?
I'd avoid any drug smuggled into the youth scene by the Israeli intelligence community.
When I dug into the subject, the nearest thing I found to the same effects on brain cells that MDMA has was Polio's effect on nerve endings throughout the body. I think we're going to start seeing some really messed up people incapable of producing serotonin when they hit their 50's. I can't begin to imagine how crappy that would be!
-FL
Better solution: Don't get conned into joining the army. Don't support/turn a blind eye to psychopathic leaders who like to invent wars or who pressure populations into war frenzies. A little awareness on everybody's part would go a long way.
Instead, we're playing Tetris and a host of other video games which eases the immediate stress and suffering which in turn makes it easier for the psychopaths to ratchet up the pressure, requiring even more numbing distractions.
But of course, even if these problems were solved, there would still be trauma. And while short term relief solutions are useful at mitigating and providing coping mechanisms, the long-term process of repairing and strengthening the mind is the real way to go, I would think.
-FL
Hello my friend FL. I am off topic, but i have a question... is there a way in slashdot to communicate directly with a user? I am interested to have an email of yours, if it is OK with you, but i cant find a way to send you a direct message. Is there a way for us to exchange EMAILS?
I'm sorry, but that's not going to happen. Hell, I seed to mislead. Too many creepy crawlies around here to not take appropriate precautions.
-FL
I'm generally amazed when a button actually DOES work. (I lived in a building where the elevator doors instantly responded. That was great.)
When buttons do nothing, I just fume at the city or whatever agency I happen to live under the management of.
But Placebo?
Far too much is attributed to that effect. I think there must be a sliding scale of environmental awareness where some people are a lot more easily fooled than others. Heck, I know this to be true. I wonder if perhaps those who cry, "Placebo Effect!" are among those who are more easily fooled and thus have a hard time working out what reality is actually doing most of the time. Perhaps this is why science is so important to them? Their instincts are poor and thus they need a reliable system of reality reading, not to fall back on or use in conjunction with, but as their primary guide to existence.
Hm. Interesting.
-FL
those that are debt addicted suffer, those that are not are happy.
Everybody is 'debt addicted'. Even you, though it sounds like your vision might be too narrow to recognize it.
Money creates debt through its very existence. It's impossible for crippling systematic debt not to accrue. That's just how it is. It sounds like you've managed to be among the small percentage able to dance a little faster than everybody else on the shrinking number of ice cubes, but as the whole thing slides under it will have been wise to make sure you weren't too smug or Darwinian in your thinking to have created bonds of trust and support among the members of your community.
-FL
The fact that this post got modded up to Insightful at all shows how lame the Slashdot moderation process has become.
So what are you saying? That democratic systems are flawed because you think you're smarter than everybody else using them?
Well, yes, actually. That's pretty much my point. -Except that I also happen to think that I'm probably smarter than you as well.
-FL
Goddammit! We got fooled again!
I think this is just a ripening up of the American public for Palin and the Tea-Nazis to come crash the party in two years time. It's all just part of the show and Obama is just the latest bit-part player.
-FL
I think they need those protections, because pirating can hurt the book market a lot.
See, that's where you messed up. You're doing the same kind of 'thinking' an audience does when they observe a magician's act. It's a trick.
Creators were making little to no money from media sales long before wide-spread pirating came along. This has been true ever since the dawn of industrialized mass-reproduction of media. Publishers, editors, printers, binders, distributors all get paid, but the authors frequently get swindled. It's an old, old story and so-called piracy, (I prefer the word, "sharing") has little to do with it.
Nothing has changed except that greedy people are frustrated when others share.
Interestingly, when people embrace sharing, authors and musicians get paid. -Because money is shared as well! Those who hate sharing and want to build a system of forced payment will, when not forced themselves, fight to not share with authors and creators.
See how it works? Don't be tricked.
-FL
This only demonstrates that there are enough selfish, sociopathic creeps out there (of both sexes), to shape behavioral bell-curves for entire populations.
No surprise there.
Anybody here ever snap awake with a sudden wave of panic to the fact that you're locked up in a cage packed full of mindless, wild animals masquerading as human and there's not a damned thing you can do about it other than hope you can distract them long enough to avoid getting your jugular ripped open with their zombie fangs? Yes? Then you probably don't fit into that above-mentioned bell-curve.
-FL
Wow. I've never seen a story go dead like this on Slashdot.
Server problems, or just a boring story?
Surely somebody can come up with something witty and biblically snide. Snakes? Immaculate conceptions? I mean, come on!
I for one find the idea of snakes creepy, and self-replicating snakes even creepier. Brr.
Reptiles suck.
-FL