I think it's a phase. When you're 15, Manga is the coolest thing on the planet. Then you realize that the 95% crap rule is just as strictly enforced in Japan as elsewhere, except that it's somehow worse; even the worst schlock looks pretty competent. It's a lot like American television, now that I think about it.
I went through a ten year period of "I AM SICK TO DEATH OF JAPANESE CULTURE". Then I got older and started to wonder where the heck the baby was. (Geddit? Cuz I threw it out with the bathwater. . ? Never mind.) --And that the 5% AWESOME rule applies in Japan as it does anywhere else on the planet, except that since Japan exports more of raw media than, say, Sweden or Brazil, even 5% is actually pretty significant. You still have to wear hip-waders, though. And perhaps the rule is more like 2%).
Anyway, it seems to work much the same way as America does with its export of movie and television, which alter and Americanize cultures all over the planet. Ha ha! Japan is giving us some of our own medicine, re-writing brain-code for legions of young Westerners. That ought to mess things up pretty good. And it may not even be a negative thing; Sharing cultural strengths can lead to greater human understanding and perspective across the globe. It's nice to think that it's not all uni-directional anymore. But still. . . Japan and the U.S.? Wow. What a pair of seriously whacked-out cultures to pick.
The U.S. with its repressed sex issues, guns and 'splosions. . , and Japan with it's even more repressed sex issues and endless highschool dramas. And Big Robots. Or was that last decade?
Are robots still big in Japan?
(Geddit? Are robots still BIG in. . . Never mind.)
You're allowed to stop if you're not enjoying it, you know, it's not like volunteering for the Marines.
Have you never endured something you didn't like out of morbid fascination and complained bitterly afterwards just for the fun of it? --Sometimes being able to pick apart and understand why something which should be brilliant but is instead broken. . , sometimes the disaster is just as enjoyable as experiencing something which is flawless. (Different types of enjoyment, naturally.)
Normally I'd agree with you wholeheartedly, except in this case Microsoft handed control over to the second largest P.R. firm in the U.S., which certainly doesn't share Balmer's abysmal understanding of the business world and MS's customer base.
The more I learn about big gun Public Relations and just how advanced the science of psychology is today, --and just how little of this remarkable knowledge is recognized by the general public, the more astonished and skeptical I become about pretty much everything represented in the mainstream media. (Fun fact: Hill & Knowlton, the P.R. firm which sold congress the war in Kuwait, and many say Bush Senior's election, by arranging for the Kuwaiti ambassador's 15 year-old daughter to pretend to be a humble peasant and sob before congress re-telling the completely false tale of how Iraqi soldiers wrenched babies from incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals. . , Hill & Knowlton which went on to sell more false atrocity stories to keep the guns rolling in the Bosnian conflict. . . Well, guess who ran Obama's campaign?)
Occam's razor leads me to conclude that the Seinfeld/Gates ad campaign was a failure, not a step in some grand plan.
Occam never studied marketing, whereas the guy I was discussing this with spent a well-compensated 20 years in the field. In any case, Occam's razor contains a serious logical flaw, (bonus points if you can work it out), and should be used far less liberally than it usually is.
--To get an idea of just how devious P.R. firms are, research the way cigarettes and razor blades were sold to women. (And be sure to ignore the blatantly false representation offered by such popular and award-winning television nonsense as, "Mad Men"). --And cigarettes and razor blades were early on in the evolution of psychology. People tend to feel very offended and threatened when they learn just how much of their thinking is automatic in nature and thus easily manipulated. Free will? Possible, but rare, and certainly not likely when people retreat into denial rather than look at unsettling truths.
1. "conscious" is an adjective. Perhaps you mean "conscience".
Ha ha. Right you are! --The funny part is that I had it right in my first draft but switched it around on a sleepy whim because I mixed it up with the idea of Pinocchio's cricket, which just sounded weird.
2. I do not see a logical connection between "acts I and II" and "act III". My understanding is that Windows Vista is widely perceived as garbage, and simply therefore, people bent on Windows will be optimistic about its successor.
Public opinion is a fickle thing, and in Microsoft's case, it was out for blood. Humans are Dog Pack creatures, and when somebody so despised goes down, their demise can be met with a bloodthirsty sort of glee from the public unless something is done to trigger a different kind of emotional response. With the recent public warming toward Linux on all those millions of cheap new netbooks, and the hostility the world was feeling for being strong-armed into buying Vista, I can understand the motivation behind Microsoft to invest heavily in a public relations fix. Spending that kind of money all in one shot smelled to me of desperation.
While discussing the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ad spots Microsoft ran a few months back, we chanced upon perhaps the real thinking behind it. . .
Universally hailed as a magnificent failure, we wondered exactly how with Microsoft using all the expertise of the P.R. giant, Waggener Edstrom, and the quarter-billion dollars spent on the project, such a thing could be possible. How could, with those kinds of resources, anybody achieve such a catastrophic P.R. failure?
Then we realized, "No. It wasn't a failure at all. It was a brilliant success!"
Here's the logic:
After the self-destruction of Vista, Microsoft was in free fall. Investors were mightily distressed at Balmer's ineptitude. And so, as happens when huge corporations are desperate, they went to Waggener Edstrom for a rescue plan.
The P.R. firm sat down and worked out the psychology and set up the following three act show: Act I involved subtle media manipulation presenting Balmer as the idiot he is, the weak link responsible for Vista's failure. This has been accomplished.
Act II involved running a bunch of ads which were designed to do two things:
1. Make sure that people knew that Gates was still involved with Microsoft; that he'd gone walkabout, but was still there in the wings.
2. Show Gates being a hopeless geek. --He was portrayed as an awkward fool who couldn't act and had no screen presence. The whole series left you feeling painfully embarrassed and despite yourself, kind of sorry for him. --Think about that! When EVER has the world felt sorry for Bill Gates? But investors don't want him to be a charismatic actor. They want him to be a hopeless geek/genius who will rescue their share values.
Now, act III involves the placement of the upcoming Windows 7 in the public conscious, which, surprise, surprise, is getting lots of positive response and sympathy, general good-will and a collective hope that it won't suck. (At least from the general population; Slashdotters are a breed apart.)
Not a bad bit of P.R. work. Sneaky and manipulative, playing on those hidden aspects of the human mind to achieve its objectives. That's why Microsoft pays Waggener Edstrom 250 million dollars a year. The most powerful advertising happens when you think it isn't working.
TeeVee is a hideous, brain-sucking monster. But in a very selfish way, I'm semi-glad it exists. The sheep, (oh, dear lord, who will think of the SHEEP??), will actually spend time abusing themselves with advertising and television-imposed life schedules and all the other crap TeeVee inflicts, and through their doing this, they ensure that there's a market big enough to justify the existence of shows like Doctor Who. --Which is available world-wide on the internet, ad-free, like minutes after the credits roll on television sets all across Britain.
Of course, internet media entertainment isn't a whole lot less brain-sucking. My last great sin a couple of months back was to download and watch every $#&@(@# episode of that retarded island show, "Lost". My ears and eyes were bleeding and I was practically shouting at the screen through most of it, but that's my monkey to deal with. --And it's like every second episode of Doctor Who was written by chimps. What a shame. But the episodes which shine, SHINE! --I mean, yes, Doctor Who feels maybe one or two steps removed from Muppets In Space, but you know, I loved the Muppets as well.
As Neil Gaiman put it; "Doctor Who is one of those rare shows I can watch with my daughter and we can both enjoy!" (That's me quoting from memory, but the sentiment is accurate.)
And Right-On, you know? Positive, smart, encouraging messages through SciFi? We haven't had that since. . . Geez, TNG? Has it really been that long? And I love the new emotionally-aware angle to the Doctor. Man, I went back and rented some old Tom Baker episodes, and was stunned at how flat they were. When I was a kid, I thought that man was the coolest dude in the universe, but it was positively missing huge chunks of humanity. "Just-the-facts" Sci-Fi doesn't cut it for me anymore, apparently.
I've heard variations of that as well. Under certain conditions and depending on the composition of the object, I'm sure it is true. A lump of ice isn't going to be very hot. A lump of Iron probably will be. --When the space shuttle comes down, it has to cool on the tarmac for a good long while. I suspect that there is no one black & white rule to measure these events by.
Also, keeping in mind that a rock falling from space could carry enough potential energy in terms of basic kinetics to create heat on impact. Again, with so many different possibilities and variations, all manner of results are likely to be observed.
Normally I look beyond the surface to see what is being discussed, but half way through I realized, "Music Tax"?? --And realized that after all the smoke and mirrors, switchbacks and rationalizations are summed up, the convoluted system whereby music has been harnessed by the wheels of industry, "Music Tax" describes it exactly.
Pay tax to listen to music. I'm certain given enough time and marketing, logical arguments could be made to stick for implementing a Sunshine Tax, and a Happiness Tax.
Soy is in everything. I did a walk-around my local grocery store a couple of years back and found that about 70-80% of all products contained soy in some fashion or other.
If you want your population to be more manageable, knocking the fight out of them through the feed is a pretty straight-forward way to do it. The hard sell on soy into every sector of the food industry has been pretty astonishing. It should be mentioned that Monsanto played an enormous role in establishing this trend, with their premier roundup-ready crop being soy.
From Aspartame, to GM crops, to the soy scam, to, (the most recent thing in the news), the 1000's of suiciding farmers in India, Monsanto almost qualifies for the mantle of, "Evil Bond Villain".
See? Freedom of expression is meaningless when self-policing works so well.
Militant ignorance is worn like an arm band these days. --Though, you might want to reconsider the whole creationism thing if you really want to rise through the ranks rather than molder among the aging recruits.
Goodness! There appears to be a large number of people who still seem to buy into the idea that on-line journalists are not 'real' journalists. This speaks of something very significant.
People who voice dissent have throughout history been persecuted. But now there's a flashy new system in place in the West, whereby the public itself condemns and self-polices its own thinking by castigating outspoken people for not conforming to the 'official' definition of Person On A Soapbox. --That's all journalists are. People who have the power to reach others with their words. That's all. People speaking out with what they know and think. That's it. But we only listen to those who have been 'approved' and 'licensed'.
Yes, there are rules in place saying you cannot lie in the media. But isn't it curious that we observe lying happening all the time through all the big network and print organs, every day, bold and shameless, and yet nobody seems to be punished for it? Why? Because a certain type of lie fits with the official story, and that kind of lying is 'okay'. After all, the system sifts through the human debris and selects only those for the big soap boxes who can be expected to play along, to believe the right things. --But the small people on small soap boxes are not so easily controlled. And so they are maligned in a thousand different ways. Slashdotters who condemn them as, 'Not real journalists' have bought the con job hook to sinker. "They are mostly opinionated and biased and their facts are not reliable!" --Yes, but everybody, EVERYBODY in the media, big and small, is also a fallible human, and their degree of bullshit is by no means determined by the size of their salary. It is the job of the individual to sort, compare and absorb knowledge according to their own senses and efforts. To expect that an information source is pure and that one need only tune and stop thinking is another ridiculous concept sold to the masses by the 'official' media. And they have clearly sold it very well indeed.
I just yesterday had a conversation with a person involved with a documentary film. --Seems the Canadian military is producing one of those radio-free programs somewhere in Ontario, pretending that the broadcast is coming from the heart of Afghan territory, and broadcasting this 'news' show within Afghanistan to spread a message deemed officially suitable, all to alter the behavior of the local citizens. --A curious way to spread truth and democracy, Canada. It speaks of utter disrespect for a population to use a signal which at its most fundamental level is false. And does anybody really think that this kind of tactic isn't used here in the West? When those in power hold such disrespect for populations, believing that, "People are sheep; they cannot manage themselves", then we would be insane not to expect similar population manipulations on a wide scale.
There are very few "People on a Soap Box" in the West who are not fools or outright liars. The smartest, most insightful of those voices are marginalized. There's no mystery why guys like Bill Moyers are slammed on Fox, and Noam Chomsky is not even mentioned. We have an endless parade of foolish talking heads and toothless, misguided 'journalists' dominating our airwaves and our print media. And when a new source of information comes along, offering a new and powerful way for people to collect information, it is derided and shat upon. And evidently, put in jail.
The sad part is not that this is the case. --That part is infuriating. The sad part is that so many people believe that this is deserved.
People don't get arrested for false reporting. Truth holds little value for those in power. --People get arrested for irritating those with the power to do something about it.
The 90% bullshit rule still applies, naturally, (though, I'd round it up another nine percentage points). But in that top 1%, some innovative and interesting control measures start to show up. --Third party bullying, hacking, and information pollution sponsored by the usual suspects. There's more ways to harass a writer than by swinging the end of a truncheon, and many of those ways are not just immediately effective but serve in the lower echelons of the credibility tree to guide public thinking to a very large degree. Some of the things people actively, violently don't believe offer an indication of just how effective the experiment has been.
The experiment being attempted in America is that of convincing people to police themselves without the heavy-handed direct tactics of old. Seems to be working. As Henry Ford might have put it, "You can have any president you want, so long as it's Barak."
That being said, the West doesn't have an entirely clean slate with regard to the treatment of on-line journalists. Amy Goodman could describe something about it. Of course, her arrest didn't come on orders from the top down, but the enforcers who arrested her did not pay any penalty for observing their directives which did come from on high.
Further. . , it would be foolish to assume that noted truth-tellers in the West have not been placed on the red lists for speedy processing should a few of those executive orders be invoked. (I suspect you'll be safe.)
My guess is that the poster's comment stemmed from the "Are Corporations Evil" question as posed by the film, "The Corporation". --Those who don't like the posited theory are quick to point out that corporations are just collections of people working together, and that any evil lies with them and cannot be blamed on the concept of the corporation itself which is neither good nor evil.
It's rather a touchstone issue with some people, (usually conservatives; liberal thinkers tend to say, "Corporations are evil? Well, duh."), and thus those of them who want their world to fit into a rational framework have to come to terms with the wide evidence of corporate wrong-doing while still maintaining their foundation belief in the competitive business model. Thus small triggers like, "Apple thinks. .." are enough to elicit a response.
World-burning asteroids of the type we're starting to see are part of a rather large cluster which has been studiously not-discussed since it began its inbound solar trajectory a few years back from where it was unceremoniously nine-pinned from the Kuiper Belt by a brown dwarf. I suspect that even if we had put some kind of defense into place years ago, it might find itself sorely taxed.
Instead, I believe the response to an impending asteroid pummeling anticipated by our mighty world leaders involves a great deal of tunnel digging and strict population management measures of the sort we are seeing being rushed into place --so that the remaining human debris can be sorted into convenient work groups.
A grim theory. Me. . , I'll invest in a nice lawn chair.
One of the most reliably indicative traits of the psychopathic personality is that of mirroring behavior. Without any internal ability to produce genuine human responses of their own, psychopaths in their attempts to mimic what to them is the incomprehensible behavior of normal humans, must rely entirely on observation. This results in a series of traits, including as previously noted, that of blaming their victims for the crimes they have themselves committed. This extends in part from a predatory element of game theory; the psychopath learns at a young age that when they mirror the behavior and emotions expressed by their target, that their target will see themselves in the psychopath, and thus believe the psychopath to be capable of compassion. The victim seeing themselves, lower their defenses due to their being in the company of a presumed 'like mind'.
The interesting thing, however, is that the psychopath does not, cannot, grasp that there are times when this type of mirroring creates inappropriate and awkward-sounding responses. --This is the reason why psychopaths can be regularly heard to make strange comments which are out of context or 'odd' sounding; language usage which is peppered with logical flaws despite an otherwise often powerful intelligence. Even as dead a giveaway as this is, however, people find it very hard to notice. Normal people automatically attempt to justify and correct for these errors in real time even as they hear and observe them in others; people will bend over backwards to excuse the psychopath's odd behavior because they assume there is a real person behind the mask of sanity, and so in a sense, fill in the gaps, based on the assumption that they are dealing with a person with a properly working human mind. In effect, because people have compassion, they question if it is not instead their own limitations in perception which are causing the hiccups and not the other way around, especially when the psychopath appears so very confident and intelligent. It is counter-intuitive and by no means automatic to assume that one is really dealing with an alien, predatory intelligence. Because of this, the psychopath finds it very easy to remain hidden in human society. Humans are socially wired to look the other way and ignore warning signs. It is not until one endeavors to observe the psychopath from a clinical perspective that the gross errors stack up and the 'wrongness' becomes apparent.
The example above is a good illustration of the mirroring effect; after being described as mentally damaged, (the complaint), the subject attempts to return the very same accusation, despite the obvious logical flaws in the argument. --Were this subject to have stolen money or physically abused a victim, then it would have accused the victim of that very same thing, always attempting to play the supplicant. You will notice that all other relevant points I used to support the original observation have been completely ignored; facts are seen by the psychopath as merely tools to be manipulated or ignored as necessary to advance the game. Note also the strange language construction used throughout, all items typical of the psychopathic personality.
Note that it is entirely possible that the psychopath really does believe that there is something wrong with me in writing about it in the third person! --It's not just a broken argument on its part. The psychopath lives perpetually at the center of it's own universe; it is actually fundamentally inconceivable that it can exist in the third person to others. I'll get into more about that particular phenomenon later.
There are numerous other elements about the psychopath which are of interest. Hopefully the one we have under glass here will jump around for us a bit more so we can observe some of those other traits as they pop up.
you had given a link containing a lot of psychotic behaviour belonging to you.
Bingo! That's the text book delusion. --Anybody with interest will be able to judge accordingly for his or herself. It's actually a fascinating study of one of the most aggressive, non-repentant, logically twisted and generally stunning examples of psychotic narcissism I've ever encountered. To not keep that fly under glass would be a crime to an entire branch of social study!
thank you. oh and by the way, i loved your parent comment too, a lot of insults, a lot of aggression. trademark.
Aggression? Ha ha! I think the term is, "Accurate description." I'd have picked less colloquial wordings, but 'creep-crawly' fits like a glove. --As a point of interest, the narcissistic delusional always accuses others of its own pattern of violation. The linked thread is quite stunning, and it becomes more so as the psychotic's confidence increased through the belief that the forum became less and less populated and thus his behavior less likely to be observed by others over the course of several days. Psychotics prefer to do their work in the dark. Seriously; by the end, this particular subject, mistaking polite dialogue for weakness and believing I was somehow tenderized enough, actually attempted to place himself in the position of personal cultic guru. It was quite sick, and I certainly sympathize with any flesh and blood people under his sway. I encourage everybody to read through the thread and learn how to spot these types. Knowledge protects. When you see this kind of behavior in your life, you are not nuts and you should feel no shame in cutting off the leach. There are several techniques, and frank openness and community are your primary allies. Chances are, you will not be the only one who has been subject to manipulation and attack from the same source. "Forgive and Forget" and "Turn the other cheek" are false tactics, which will only allow the psychotic to continue to feed.
And of this creep in question. . . How IS that ego doing these days? --Managed to chip any corners off? Considered even once the possibility of even a small error and adjusted thought patterns accordingly? No? Ego is the first thing which should be on the chopping block for any 'good guy'. --Also, a re-examination of the whole promoting mass suicide and self-destructive video game addiction as healthy behavior is in order. But from all indications, I very much doubt the capability exists.
Hm. Advising people to feel okay about self-destructive, obsessive behavior? That's something of a reversal for this clown. But I suppose it's marginally better than his advising them to kill themselves in response to social injustice. Sleep or kill yourself. Nice.
Keep your eye on this creepy-crawly. His psychotic bullshit-storm is something to see!
your tinfoil hat is a bit tight, seems to be speeding the insanity
Think now: You took the time to fling a pre-packaged insult at me in an attempt to. . ? What? Embarrass me into only speaking the 'right' things? Have you ever stopped to wonder why your knee jerks like that? What purpose does it serve? --Of course, it's pack mentality; this is understood. But why? Do you really think it's YOU making that decision. It's not. It's auto-reaction, and it was baked in place long ago. And not by you.
Most people simply auto-react their way through every minute of every day, thinking that it's them at the helm, when really it's not. It's actually very easy to control populations and events in a way which is quite invisible to the population. Heck, there's a good chance you don't even realize you're mostly robot. The very idea right now is most likely making you scramble to access some basic calming program to make the creepy feeling go away as fast as possible.
With these mechanisms being so ubiquitous, if somebody wanted to make a group of people become pirates and have them think it was their idea all along, it would be very easy to do.
I read a quote somewhere. I think it might have been Lee Iacoca. Anyway, it advised that it takes three people to change the world.
1. A Genius, able to see the world in fantastic new ways, a quality which negates the ability to function within or understand the workings of mundane society. 2. A Banker, skilled in making the factories and marketing work, but who as a result cannot be anything more than incrementally innovative. 3. A Communicator, who is too grounded to be a Genius, and too loose to be a Banker, but lives just enough in both those worlds to connect the halves together and complete the equation.
It sounds like Dean stumbled into his own source of money, but could still use a conservative mover and shaker to bring his ideas to fruition more effectively.
Didn't we already have an age of piracy? Wasn't it the main reason the U.S. Navy was invented?
This looks like another trumped up excuse to scare people and spend money on guns.
--We've had a fairly large up-tick in media awareness about pirates over the last few years. (Thank-you, Disney and Mr. Depp.) --Heck, a few weeks back when I was buying some coffee, the lady at the cash informed me that I could win a prize because it was international 'Pirate Day'. WTF??
Before Iraq, there was a media build up with huge popular mind-shaping software like, "Command & Conquer". Something is going on. Despite conventional wisdom, convergences of this nature never happen for no reason.
The funny thing is that after I read, Snowcrash, my reaction was almost exactly like yours is to this new book. The book seemed painfully sloppy and ultimately pointless.
This was a disappointment, because my first introduction to Stephenson was also his essay, "In the beginning was the command line", and I was similarly impressed with it. The essay arrived at my home in paper form; my room mate had printed it out at work and brought it back to share.
But Snowcrash just annoyed me. I thought it was full of clever ideas and wonderful passages, (The bit at the beginning describing the net speeds using the analogy of a 747 filled with encyclopedias dive bombing into his house every twenty seconds, forever), but sloppy, emotionally weak, and sloppy. I remember finishing and wishing out loud that the man had a better editor. I didn't bother with Diamond Age because somebody told me it dealt in a large part with a nanotech revolution of sort. I've never been impressed with the idea of nanotech, which seems like an over-blown and generally uninteresting sci-fi idea. (Our current biosphere is already built out of nanotech, except nature always does it better, faster, smarter, and so basically what we're talking about is genetic manipulation but not as good.)
It wasn't until just a year ago when I picked up Cryptonomicon on a lark that I was suitably impressed again. "Wow. This book ISN'T ultimately pointless. Neal Stephenson has grown up. Cool!"
I tried reading the Baroque Trilogy, but was stumped at my local book store. (--It's a used book store. They only had one of the middle books from some version where they'd broken the trilogy up into a half dozen or more smaller episodes. No thanks. I'll find a copy of the first one eventually.)
But this new one sounds interesting. I'd love to have a nice big book to curl up with when it gets dark and cold. Thanks for the heads up. When it comes to current literature, I'm hopelessly out of touch, it seems.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's a phase. When you're 15, Manga is the coolest thing on the planet. Then you realize that the 95% crap rule is just as strictly enforced in Japan as elsewhere, except that it's somehow worse; even the worst schlock looks pretty competent. It's a lot like American television, now that I think about it.
I went through a ten year period of "I AM SICK TO DEATH OF JAPANESE CULTURE". Then I got older and started to wonder where the heck the baby was. (Geddit? Cuz I threw it out with the bathwater. . ? Never mind.) --And that the 5% AWESOME rule applies in Japan as it does anywhere else on the planet, except that since Japan exports more of raw media than, say, Sweden or Brazil, even 5% is actually pretty significant. You still have to wear hip-waders, though. And perhaps the rule is more like 2%).
Anyway, it seems to work much the same way as America does with its export of movie and television, which alter and Americanize cultures all over the planet. Ha ha! Japan is giving us some of our own medicine, re-writing brain-code for legions of young Westerners. That ought to mess things up pretty good. And it may not even be a negative thing; Sharing cultural strengths can lead to greater human understanding and perspective across the globe. It's nice to think that it's not all uni-directional anymore. But still. . . Japan and the U.S.? Wow. What a pair of seriously whacked-out cultures to pick.
The U.S. with its repressed sex issues, guns and 'splosions. . , and Japan with it's even more repressed sex issues and endless highschool dramas. And Big Robots. Or was that last decade?
Are robots still big in Japan?
(Geddit? Are robots still BIG in. . . Never mind.)
-FL
You're allowed to stop if you're not enjoying it, you know, it's not like volunteering for the Marines.
Have you never endured something you didn't like out of morbid fascination and complained bitterly afterwards just for the fun of it? --Sometimes being able to pick apart and understand why something which should be brilliant but is instead broken. . , sometimes the disaster is just as enjoyable as experiencing something which is flawless. (Different types of enjoyment, naturally.)
-FL
Isn't it available ad-free starting from about an hour BEFORE the closing credits roll on television sets all across Britain?
I guess so. Must be nice for the Brits, eh? Of course, they don't get to press pause when they go to the 'loo'.
-FL
Normally I'd agree with you wholeheartedly, except in this case Microsoft handed control over to the second largest P.R. firm in the U.S., which certainly doesn't share Balmer's abysmal understanding of the business world and MS's customer base.
The more I learn about big gun Public Relations and just how advanced the science of psychology is today, --and just how little of this remarkable knowledge is recognized by the general public, the more astonished and skeptical I become about pretty much everything represented in the mainstream media. (Fun fact: Hill & Knowlton, the P.R. firm which sold congress the war in Kuwait, and many say Bush Senior's election, by arranging for the Kuwaiti ambassador's 15 year-old daughter to pretend to be a humble peasant and sob before congress re-telling the completely false tale of how Iraqi soldiers wrenched babies from incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals. . , Hill & Knowlton which went on to sell more false atrocity stories to keep the guns rolling in the Bosnian conflict. . . Well, guess who ran Obama's campaign?)
It's a funny old world. . .
-FL
Occam's razor leads me to conclude that the Seinfeld/Gates ad campaign was a failure, not a step in some grand plan.
Occam never studied marketing, whereas the guy I was discussing this with spent a well-compensated 20 years in the field. In any case, Occam's razor contains a serious logical flaw, (bonus points if you can work it out), and should be used far less liberally than it usually is.
--To get an idea of just how devious P.R. firms are, research the way cigarettes and razor blades were sold to women. (And be sure to ignore the blatantly false representation offered by such popular and award-winning television nonsense as, "Mad Men"). --And cigarettes and razor blades were early on in the evolution of psychology. People tend to feel very offended and threatened when they learn just how much of their thinking is automatic in nature and thus easily manipulated. Free will? Possible, but rare, and certainly not likely when people retreat into denial rather than look at unsettling truths.
-FL
1. "conscious" is an adjective. Perhaps you mean "conscience".
Ha ha. Right you are! --The funny part is that I had it right in my first draft but switched it around on a sleepy whim because I mixed it up with the idea of Pinocchio's cricket, which just sounded weird.
2. I do not see a logical connection between "acts I and II" and "act III". My understanding is that Windows Vista is widely perceived as garbage, and simply therefore, people bent on Windows will be optimistic about its successor.
Public opinion is a fickle thing, and in Microsoft's case, it was out for blood. Humans are Dog Pack creatures, and when somebody so despised goes down, their demise can be met with a bloodthirsty sort of glee from the public unless something is done to trigger a different kind of emotional response. With the recent public warming toward Linux on all those millions of cheap new netbooks, and the hostility the world was feeling for being strong-armed into buying Vista, I can understand the motivation behind Microsoft to invest heavily in a public relations fix. Spending that kind of money all in one shot smelled to me of desperation.
-FL
While discussing the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld ad spots Microsoft ran a few months back, we chanced upon perhaps the real thinking behind it. . .
Universally hailed as a magnificent failure, we wondered exactly how with Microsoft using all the expertise of the P.R. giant, Waggener Edstrom, and the quarter-billion dollars spent on the project, such a thing could be possible. How could, with those kinds of resources, anybody achieve such a catastrophic P.R. failure?
Then we realized, "No. It wasn't a failure at all. It was a brilliant success!"
Here's the logic:
After the self-destruction of Vista, Microsoft was in free fall. Investors were mightily distressed at Balmer's ineptitude. And so, as happens when huge corporations are desperate, they went to Waggener Edstrom for a rescue plan.
The P.R. firm sat down and worked out the psychology and set up the following three act show: Act I involved subtle media manipulation presenting Balmer as the idiot he is, the weak link responsible for Vista's failure. This has been accomplished.
Act II involved running a bunch of ads which were designed to do two things:
1. Make sure that people knew that Gates was still involved with Microsoft; that he'd gone walkabout, but was still there in the wings.
2. Show Gates being a hopeless geek. --He was portrayed as an awkward fool who couldn't act and had no screen presence. The whole series left you feeling painfully embarrassed and despite yourself, kind of sorry for him. --Think about that! When EVER has the world felt sorry for Bill Gates? But investors don't want him to be a charismatic actor. They want him to be a hopeless geek/genius who will rescue their share values.
Now, act III involves the placement of the upcoming Windows 7 in the public conscious, which, surprise, surprise, is getting lots of positive response and sympathy, general good-will and a collective hope that it won't suck. (At least from the general population; Slashdotters are a breed apart.)
Not a bad bit of P.R. work. Sneaky and manipulative, playing on those hidden aspects of the human mind to achieve its objectives. That's why Microsoft pays Waggener Edstrom 250 million dollars a year. The most powerful advertising happens when you think it isn't working.
-FL
TeeVee is a hideous, brain-sucking monster. But in a very selfish way, I'm semi-glad it exists. The sheep, (oh, dear lord, who will think of the SHEEP??), will actually spend time abusing themselves with advertising and television-imposed life schedules and all the other crap TeeVee inflicts, and through their doing this, they ensure that there's a market big enough to justify the existence of shows like Doctor Who. --Which is available world-wide on the internet, ad-free, like minutes after the credits roll on television sets all across Britain.
Of course, internet media entertainment isn't a whole lot less brain-sucking. My last great sin a couple of months back was to download and watch every $#&@(@# episode of that retarded island show, "Lost". My ears and eyes were bleeding and I was practically shouting at the screen through most of it, but that's my monkey to deal with. --And it's like every second episode of Doctor Who was written by chimps. What a shame. But the episodes which shine, SHINE! --I mean, yes, Doctor Who feels maybe one or two steps removed from Muppets In Space, but you know, I loved the Muppets as well.
As Neil Gaiman put it; "Doctor Who is one of those rare shows I can watch with my daughter and we can both enjoy!" (That's me quoting from memory, but the sentiment is accurate.)
And Right-On, you know? Positive, smart, encouraging messages through SciFi? We haven't had that since. . . Geez, TNG? Has it really been that long? And I love the new emotionally-aware angle to the Doctor. Man, I went back and rented some old Tom Baker episodes, and was stunned at how flat they were. When I was a kid, I thought that man was the coolest dude in the universe, but it was positively missing huge chunks of humanity. "Just-the-facts" Sci-Fi doesn't cut it for me anymore, apparently.
-FL
I've heard variations of that as well. Under certain conditions and depending on the composition of the object, I'm sure it is true. A lump of ice isn't going to be very hot. A lump of Iron probably will be. --When the space shuttle comes down, it has to cool on the tarmac for a good long while. I suspect that there is no one black & white rule to measure these events by.
Also, keeping in mind that a rock falling from space could carry enough potential energy in terms of basic kinetics to create heat on impact. Again, with so many different possibilities and variations, all manner of results are likely to be observed.
-FL
Normally I look beyond the surface to see what is being discussed, but half way through I realized, "Music Tax"?? --And realized that after all the smoke and mirrors, switchbacks and rationalizations are summed up, the convoluted system whereby music has been harnessed by the wheels of industry, "Music Tax" describes it exactly.
Pay tax to listen to music. I'm certain given enough time and marketing, logical arguments could be made to stick for implementing a Sunshine Tax, and a Happiness Tax.
And it's why the Empire is falling.
-FL
Soy is in everything. I did a walk-around my local grocery store a couple of years back and found that about 70-80% of all products contained soy in some fashion or other.
If you want your population to be more manageable, knocking the fight out of them through the feed is a pretty straight-forward way to do it. The hard sell on soy into every sector of the food industry has been pretty astonishing. It should be mentioned that Monsanto played an enormous role in establishing this trend, with their premier roundup-ready crop being soy.
From Aspartame, to GM crops, to the soy scam, to, (the most recent thing in the news), the 1000's of suiciding farmers in India, Monsanto almost qualifies for the mantle of, "Evil Bond Villain".
-FL
See? Freedom of expression is meaningless when self-policing works so well.
Militant ignorance is worn like an arm band these days. --Though, you might want to reconsider the whole creationism thing if you really want to rise through the ranks rather than molder among the aging recruits.
-FL
Goodness! There appears to be a large number of people who still seem to buy into the idea that on-line journalists are not 'real' journalists. This speaks of something very significant.
People who voice dissent have throughout history been persecuted. But now there's a flashy new system in place in the West, whereby the public itself condemns and self-polices its own thinking by castigating outspoken people for not conforming to the 'official' definition of Person On A Soapbox. --That's all journalists are. People who have the power to reach others with their words. That's all. People speaking out with what they know and think. That's it. But we only listen to those who have been 'approved' and 'licensed'.
Yes, there are rules in place saying you cannot lie in the media. But isn't it curious that we observe lying happening all the time through all the big network and print organs, every day, bold and shameless, and yet nobody seems to be punished for it? Why? Because a certain type of lie fits with the official story, and that kind of lying is 'okay'. After all, the system sifts through the human debris and selects only those for the big soap boxes who can be expected to play along, to believe the right things. --But the small people on small soap boxes are not so easily controlled. And so they are maligned in a thousand different ways. Slashdotters who condemn them as, 'Not real journalists' have bought the con job hook to sinker. "They are mostly opinionated and biased and their facts are not reliable!" --Yes, but everybody, EVERYBODY in the media, big and small, is also a fallible human, and their degree of bullshit is by no means determined by the size of their salary. It is the job of the individual to sort, compare and absorb knowledge according to their own senses and efforts. To expect that an information source is pure and that one need only tune and stop thinking is another ridiculous concept sold to the masses by the 'official' media. And they have clearly sold it very well indeed.
I just yesterday had a conversation with a person involved with a documentary film. --Seems the Canadian military is producing one of those radio-free programs somewhere in Ontario, pretending that the broadcast is coming from the heart of Afghan territory, and broadcasting this 'news' show within Afghanistan to spread a message deemed officially suitable, all to alter the behavior of the local citizens. --A curious way to spread truth and democracy, Canada. It speaks of utter disrespect for a population to use a signal which at its most fundamental level is false. And does anybody really think that this kind of tactic isn't used here in the West? When those in power hold such disrespect for populations, believing that, "People are sheep; they cannot manage themselves", then we would be insane not to expect similar population manipulations on a wide scale.
There are very few "People on a Soap Box" in the West who are not fools or outright liars. The smartest, most insightful of those voices are marginalized. There's no mystery why guys like Bill Moyers are slammed on Fox, and Noam Chomsky is not even mentioned. We have an endless parade of foolish talking heads and toothless, misguided 'journalists' dominating our airwaves and our print media. And when a new source of information comes along, offering a new and powerful way for people to collect information, it is derided and shat upon. And evidently, put in jail.
The sad part is not that this is the case. --That part is infuriating. The sad part is that so many people believe that this is deserved.
-FL
People don't get arrested for false reporting. Truth holds little value for those in power. --People get arrested for irritating those with the power to do something about it.
The 90% bullshit rule still applies, naturally, (though, I'd round it up another nine percentage points). But in that top 1%, some innovative and interesting control measures start to show up. --Third party bullying, hacking, and information pollution sponsored by the usual suspects. There's more ways to harass a writer than by swinging the end of a truncheon, and many of those ways are not just immediately effective but serve in the lower echelons of the credibility tree to guide public thinking to a very large degree. Some of the things people actively, violently don't believe offer an indication of just how effective the experiment has been.
-FL
The experiment being attempted in America is that of convincing people to police themselves without the heavy-handed direct tactics of old. Seems to be working. As Henry Ford might have put it, "You can have any president you want, so long as it's Barak."
That being said, the West doesn't have an entirely clean slate with regard to the treatment of on-line journalists. Amy Goodman could describe something about it. Of course, her arrest didn't come on orders from the top down, but the enforcers who arrested her did not pay any penalty for observing their directives which did come from on high.
Further. . , it would be foolish to assume that noted truth-tellers in the West have not been placed on the red lists for speedy processing should a few of those executive orders be invoked. (I suspect you'll be safe.)
-FL
My guess is that the poster's comment stemmed from the "Are Corporations Evil" question as posed by the film, "The Corporation". --Those who don't like the posited theory are quick to point out that corporations are just collections of people working together, and that any evil lies with them and cannot be blamed on the concept of the corporation itself which is neither good nor evil.
It's rather a touchstone issue with some people, (usually conservatives; liberal thinkers tend to say, "Corporations are evil? Well, duh."), and thus those of them who want their world to fit into a rational framework have to come to terms with the wide evidence of corporate wrong-doing while still maintaining their foundation belief in the competitive business model. Thus small triggers like, "Apple thinks. . ." are enough to elicit a response.
That's my reading anyway. I could be wrong.
-FL
World-burning asteroids of the type we're starting to see are part of a rather large cluster which has been studiously not-discussed since it began its inbound solar trajectory a few years back from where it was unceremoniously nine-pinned from the Kuiper Belt by a brown dwarf. I suspect that even if we had put some kind of defense into place years ago, it might find itself sorely taxed.
Instead, I believe the response to an impending asteroid pummeling anticipated by our mighty world leaders involves a great deal of tunnel digging and strict population management measures of the sort we are seeing being rushed into place --so that the remaining human debris can be sorted into convenient work groups.
A grim theory. Me. . , I'll invest in a nice lawn chair.
-FL
One of the most reliably indicative traits of the psychopathic personality is that of mirroring behavior. Without any internal ability to produce genuine human responses of their own, psychopaths in their attempts to mimic what to them is the incomprehensible behavior of normal humans, must rely entirely on observation. This results in a series of traits, including as previously noted, that of blaming their victims for the crimes they have themselves committed. This extends in part from a predatory element of game theory; the psychopath learns at a young age that when they mirror the behavior and emotions expressed by their target, that their target will see themselves in the psychopath, and thus believe the psychopath to be capable of compassion. The victim seeing themselves, lower their defenses due to their being in the company of a presumed 'like mind'.
The interesting thing, however, is that the psychopath does not, cannot, grasp that there are times when this type of mirroring creates inappropriate and awkward-sounding responses. --This is the reason why psychopaths can be regularly heard to make strange comments which are out of context or 'odd' sounding; language usage which is peppered with logical flaws despite an otherwise often powerful intelligence. Even as dead a giveaway as this is, however, people find it very hard to notice. Normal people automatically attempt to justify and correct for these errors in real time even as they hear and observe them in others; people will bend over backwards to excuse the psychopath's odd behavior because they assume there is a real person behind the mask of sanity, and so in a sense, fill in the gaps, based on the assumption that they are dealing with a person with a properly working human mind. In effect, because people have compassion, they question if it is not instead their own limitations in perception which are causing the hiccups and not the other way around, especially when the psychopath appears so very confident and intelligent. It is counter-intuitive and by no means automatic to assume that one is really dealing with an alien, predatory intelligence. Because of this, the psychopath finds it very easy to remain hidden in human society. Humans are socially wired to look the other way and ignore warning signs. It is not until one endeavors to observe the psychopath from a clinical perspective that the gross errors stack up and the 'wrongness' becomes apparent.
The example above is a good illustration of the mirroring effect; after being described as mentally damaged, (the complaint), the subject attempts to return the very same accusation, despite the obvious logical flaws in the argument. --Were this subject to have stolen money or physically abused a victim, then it would have accused the victim of that very same thing, always attempting to play the supplicant. You will notice that all other relevant points I used to support the original observation have been completely ignored; facts are seen by the psychopath as merely tools to be manipulated or ignored as necessary to advance the game. Note also the strange language construction used throughout, all items typical of the psychopathic personality.
Note that it is entirely possible that the psychopath really does believe that there is something wrong with me in writing about it in the third person! --It's not just a broken argument on its part. The psychopath lives perpetually at the center of it's own universe; it is actually fundamentally inconceivable that it can exist in the third person to others. I'll get into more about that particular phenomenon later.
There are numerous other elements about the psychopath which are of interest. Hopefully the one we have under glass here will jump around for us a bit more so we can observe some of those other traits as they pop up.
-FL
you had given a link containing a lot of psychotic behaviour belonging to you.
Bingo! That's the text book delusion. --Anybody with interest will be able to judge accordingly for his or herself. It's actually a fascinating study of one of the most aggressive, non-repentant, logically twisted and generally stunning examples of psychotic narcissism I've ever encountered. To not keep that fly under glass would be a crime to an entire branch of social study!
thank you. oh and by the way, i loved your parent comment too, a lot of insults, a lot of aggression. trademark.
Aggression? Ha ha! I think the term is, "Accurate description." I'd have picked less colloquial wordings, but 'creep-crawly' fits like a glove. --As a point of interest, the narcissistic delusional always accuses others of its own pattern of violation. The linked thread is quite stunning, and it becomes more so as the psychotic's confidence increased through the belief that the forum became less and less populated and thus his behavior less likely to be observed by others over the course of several days. Psychotics prefer to do their work in the dark. Seriously; by the end, this particular subject, mistaking polite dialogue for weakness and believing I was somehow tenderized enough, actually attempted to place himself in the position of personal cultic guru. It was quite sick, and I certainly sympathize with any flesh and blood people under his sway. I encourage everybody to read through the thread and learn how to spot these types. Knowledge protects. When you see this kind of behavior in your life, you are not nuts and you should feel no shame in cutting off the leach. There are several techniques, and frank openness and community are your primary allies. Chances are, you will not be the only one who has been subject to manipulation and attack from the same source. "Forgive and Forget" and "Turn the other cheek" are false tactics, which will only allow the psychotic to continue to feed.
And of this creep in question. . . How IS that ego doing these days? --Managed to chip any corners off? Considered even once the possibility of even a small error and adjusted thought patterns accordingly? No? Ego is the first thing which should be on the chopping block for any 'good guy'. --Also, a re-examination of the whole promoting mass suicide and self-destructive video game addiction as healthy behavior is in order. But from all indications, I very much doubt the capability exists.
-FL
Hm. Advising people to feel okay about self-destructive, obsessive behavior? That's something of a reversal for this clown. But I suppose it's marginally better than his advising them to kill themselves in response to social injustice. Sleep or kill yourself. Nice.
Keep your eye on this creepy-crawly. His psychotic bullshit-storm is something to see!
-FL
the satire-impaired.
-FL
your tinfoil hat is a bit tight, seems to be speeding the insanity
Think now: You took the time to fling a pre-packaged insult at me in an attempt to. . ? What? Embarrass me into only speaking the 'right' things? Have you ever stopped to wonder why your knee jerks like that? What purpose does it serve? --Of course, it's pack mentality; this is understood. But why? Do you really think it's YOU making that decision. It's not. It's auto-reaction, and it was baked in place long ago. And not by you.
Most people simply auto-react their way through every minute of every day, thinking that it's them at the helm, when really it's not. It's actually very easy to control populations and events in a way which is quite invisible to the population. Heck, there's a good chance you don't even realize you're mostly robot. The very idea right now is most likely making you scramble to access some basic calming program to make the creepy feeling go away as fast as possible.
With these mechanisms being so ubiquitous, if somebody wanted to make a group of people become pirates and have them think it was their idea all along, it would be very easy to do.
-FL
I read a quote somewhere. I think it might have been Lee Iacoca. Anyway, it advised that it takes three people to change the world.
1. A Genius, able to see the world in fantastic new ways, a quality which negates the ability to function within or understand the workings of mundane society.
2. A Banker, skilled in making the factories and marketing work, but who as a result cannot be anything more than incrementally innovative.
3. A Communicator, who is too grounded to be a Genius, and too loose to be a Banker, but lives just enough in both those worlds to connect the halves together and complete the equation.
It sounds like Dean stumbled into his own source of money, but could still use a conservative mover and shaker to bring his ideas to fruition more effectively.
-FL
Didn't we already have an age of piracy? Wasn't it the main reason the U.S. Navy was invented?
This looks like another trumped up excuse to scare people and spend money on guns.
--We've had a fairly large up-tick in media awareness about pirates over the last few years. (Thank-you, Disney and Mr. Depp.) --Heck, a few weeks back when I was buying some coffee, the lady at the cash informed me that I could win a prize because it was international 'Pirate Day'. WTF??
Before Iraq, there was a media build up with huge popular mind-shaping software like, "Command & Conquer". Something is going on. Despite conventional wisdom, convergences of this nature never happen for no reason.
-FL
The funny thing is that after I read, Snowcrash, my reaction was almost exactly like yours is to this new book. The book seemed painfully sloppy and ultimately pointless.
This was a disappointment, because my first introduction to Stephenson was also his essay, "In the beginning was the command line", and I was similarly impressed with it. The essay arrived at my home in paper form; my room mate had printed it out at work and brought it back to share.
But Snowcrash just annoyed me. I thought it was full of clever ideas and wonderful passages, (The bit at the beginning describing the net speeds using the analogy of a 747 filled with encyclopedias dive bombing into his house every twenty seconds, forever), but sloppy, emotionally weak, and sloppy. I remember finishing and wishing out loud that the man had a better editor. I didn't bother with Diamond Age because somebody told me it dealt in a large part with a nanotech revolution of sort. I've never been impressed with the idea of nanotech, which seems like an over-blown and generally uninteresting sci-fi idea. (Our current biosphere is already built out of nanotech, except nature always does it better, faster, smarter, and so basically what we're talking about is genetic manipulation but not as good.)
It wasn't until just a year ago when I picked up Cryptonomicon on a lark that I was suitably impressed again. "Wow. This book ISN'T ultimately pointless. Neal Stephenson has grown up. Cool!"
I tried reading the Baroque Trilogy, but was stumped at my local book store. (--It's a used book store. They only had one of the middle books from some version where they'd broken the trilogy up into a half dozen or more smaller episodes. No thanks. I'll find a copy of the first one eventually.)
But this new one sounds interesting. I'd love to have a nice big book to curl up with when it gets dark and cold. Thanks for the heads up. When it comes to current literature, I'm hopelessly out of touch, it seems.
-FL