The eee1000H is now around $450, and it's my new best friend. The nearly-full keyboard might as well be a full keyboard. The 10" screen is big enough to use with Photoshop in surprising comfort. Solid battery time. Great user community. --And all the other good things you've heard already from people. It's all true.
The only thing some people find is that it's a tad on the heavy side. For me, though, I actually like this. If a device is too light, I find it feels too much like a cheap toy. I use old Nortel phones which weigh a ton so they don't rattle around like Christmas tree ornaments. When I put something on a table, I like it to stay put. But it's certainly not too heavy to grab and carry with ease. --I find I treat the eee1000H the same way I might treat a smallish school text or a biggish fiction hardcover. It goes where I go, and that's the most significant and noticeable difference between it and my old lappy; the laptop is like re-deployable furniture, whereas the eee is actually immediately useful all the time no matter where I am around the house/office. I'm not actually sure what I'd do to improve it.
The last time I bought something I was this satisfied with, (to the point of smugness), was the Mini-Leatherman. --Not those silly new ones they call the 'squirt', but the original from 20 years ago. I still use that thing all the time, and it's still in excellent shape because it was built to last forever. --Of course, even the eee1000H isn't as cool as my fold-up pliers, nor will it last for anywhere nearly as long. But to be fair, proof man's divinity lies in the Mini-Leatherman, so the bar is pretty much impossibly high. The eee1000H comes fairly close, though.
Ugh. It never fails. Just when I begin to soften my attitude toward Microsoft, something comes along to remind me why I held that attitude in the first place.
While perusing the conspiracy theories from the murkiest part of the deep end, I came across these two items. . . Please don't mod them down just yet; these ones I don't buy into completely, (well, not completely) and I present them more in the form of an interesting sociological "Hmmm". (Have you ever tried cataloging this stuff?)
Okay. So two items. . .
1. The U.S. is the largest experimental society today; can you control an entire people through technology and brain washing rather than force? How is it done and what are the advantages, if any?
2. Regardless of the outcome, the idea is that all Semitic and Caucasian people are just not suitable for the New World. They'll make good fodder and they can be used to run the meat-grinder, but when all the dust settles and the blood is hosed off the streets, the preferred genetic strain is what we see to have been bred in China and countries of similar genetic stock. Why? Get ready for it, and this is where your mod-muscles will twitch: "The Asian gene type is more suitable for population control. They're more obedient."
Just think: there are people in positions of power who live by these kinds of ideas. I've met some of them.
Here's a riddle: "How many elitists does it take to put a whack-job conspiracy theory into practical application?"
Answer: "None. They create an economic reality where the peasantry must obey or starve and then hire them to do it on their behalf."
On a totally unrelated note, Fallout 3 is coming out this October.
There is plenty evidence showing the current problem is from government intervention in getting banks to make loans to people that are overly risky.
Okay, did you actually, really just try to blame the current economic crisis on people who didn't follow the strictures of the 'Free Market' obediently enough?
That is the most bugged-out bit of spin-doctored delusional insanity I've heard today, --and it's pushing 1 o'clock, so I've already heard a ton of bullshit! "Government intervention in getting banks to make loans to people".?????
Twist that sucker! Make it sing the tune you want!
--Because, you are right! There was government intervention. But the intervening act was to remove intervention. See there? Double-negative. Because it was in fact an act of Deregulation carried out under the aegis of "Free Market Capitalism." --The government deliberately prevented states from exercising their existing regulatory laws which would have punished the banks for predatory lending! In true psychopathic style, Bush-co deliberately set up the housing crisis time bomb by preventing regulation of the mortgage market so that lower level sociopaths could move in and screw people. Attorneys general from 50 states all protested a blue streak, but Bush-co ignored them, and blind worshippers of the 'Free Market' were so brainwashed that they actually cheered! Eliot Spitzer does a good job in clarifying the legal gymnastics used to perpetrate the home lending mess.
So, just to be very clear and leave no allowance for wiggle-room, you had that one backwards. Re-do.
The idea of a "free market", what it is, what it means, and how it works, is much older than the Bush and Reagan presidencies. IIRC the modern idea traces back to the 1700s in England. It is not a belief or a religion. It is the historically proven most effective way for people to organize and be productive.
Now hold on. It is a "Historically proven most effective way for people to organize"? Except, you don't have to actually believe in it or follow any sort of philosophy in order to organize yourself accordingly? So how do you know if you're doing it right? --Because you can obviously do it 'wrong', otherwise people wouldn't exist to gush on about it with such fervor, (you've heard them. I suspect you might even BE one of them). --And there wouldn't be a Bush-co to fight for 'right' way of doing things. Oh, and let's not forget that the 'Free Marekt' belief system isn't really there. The Free Market is just the 'way' things are. It's like magic, and by gum they'll tie your hands behind your back if you don't believe in it with the same certainty that they deign proper!
Pardon me, but that's EXACTLY like a religion. The fact that it's based on an actual principal (supply and demand) doesn't change the fact that it has ballooned into a belief system.
And, yeah, I know it's origins go further back than Reagan. But with generational gaps and new preachers, you get updated and newly energized versions of the same old sermons. That's all I was referring to.
Every other system has either not worked or been markedly less effective. I hope the connection between the incredible increase in productivity and lives saved in countries with relatively free markets is understood by you.
Oh just stop it with that. That's a tired old chestnut, and not even you truly believe it, otherwise you wouldn't have dropped in that, 'relatively' qualifier. I live in Canada, which has a lot more regulation than the U.S., and having traveled extensively in both countries over the last couple of decades, I can tell you that I'm damned happy to have a maple leaf on my passport. --Those portions of the U.S. where they refuse to regulate things are just plain screwed up and unfit for human life. Regulation very simply doesn't mean So
Pardon my rant; it is not directed at you necessarily, but I'm so fed up with this whole "Free Market As Religion" nonsense that your little blurb broke my camel's back today.
Why do people get so pentecostal about it? It's like waxing poetic about gravity or something. --Except Newton wasn't pushing his theory for manipulative reasons. Take a look at the original proponents of Free Market theory; they're in tight with the Reagan/Bush family tree, and now we have Bush back-pedaling on the theory with his 700 Billion dollar bailout because, as it happens, Free Market theory certainly does work. It's just that in the final analysis, a 'market correction' can equal 'the burning of Rome'.
The Free Market doesn't care if the human population gets decimated to accommodate the law of the jungle. But I do. And guess what? If I decide to tweak the jungle rules by declaring open season on Saber-toothed tigers, rather than let them run wild according to some cultist philosophy, then I betcha my tribe will live longer than the idiot monkeys clinging to their trees because of some half-baked theory, --sold to them by the freakin' Tigers. The Wallstreet gurus came up with the damned theory in order to keep everybody else enslaved. It wasn't for our good. It was for their good. And you can tell! --ANY theory which circles so closely around dogma and knee-jerk emotionalism and fear, is suspect. Oooooh. Socialism is scaaaaary. Feel your breast pound with anxiety! --Anti-socialist thinking has all the same earmarks as your friendly neighborhood church brainwashing clinic. But despite this, half the geeks around here twaddle on into the same old traps just because the words used by the preacher happen to be different. Instead of Preachers, we have Economists. Instead of a never-to-be-questioned fairy in the sky, we have the never-to-be-questioned state-sanctioned, group-think, "Almost-Science". --Official Culture, masquerading as Enlightened Thought.
All people need to do is look for the patterns, and in the case of Free Market Economics, the patterns are painfully obvious: Fervent Believers repeating Mantras over and over and over. Newton didn't foam at the mouth or get an endorphin rush from giving sermon on the mount speeches about the laws of motion. So when you see this kind of behavior, you can be damned sure that there it's being pumped on TV by some funding agency with an agenda, or it's being force fed into bright-eyed university kids by charismatic professors giving sermons instructing them according to their own good book.
So that's my rant.
Again I want to stress that this isn't aimed at you specifically, so I'm sorry for sounding brutal. --Though I will say that your point about the shape of the netbook market, while somewhat correct, isn't determined by the Free Market alone. There is one force which is very often over-looked: With the enough cash and enough skilled people, the 'free' market can be brainwashed into buying any damned thing industry feels like selling them. They can sell millions of gallons of black fizzy water in red cans and make people think they actually like it. They can sell twice as many razor blades forever if they can somehow just convince women that body hair is 'dirty'. --They can make people buy oil at $100 a barrel if they can sell people the right war. --This aspect of the 'Free Market' is never mentioned in the sermons, and the reason is that it blows the theory so full of holes that it sinks back to its natural, un-inflated level of importance. Because supply and demand do indeed have an effect on how stuff works; but it's not a hard and fast rule which will bring humanity into some kind of free-market nirvana where we can all stop thinking and rest easy on our pre-fab sound-biten economic theories.
If we do that, then we might just as well be having seizures while speaking in tongues.
Greatest Show On Earth! Everybody will be watching! The Game, the Meta Game, and the Meta-Meta Game! --Each one alone worth the price of admission!
Don't miss it!
Nobody knows what will happen! Nuclear exchanges not ruled out!
Getcher tickets now! As John Oliver put it:
"George Bush will not be remembered by history as the best president. . , but if he buckles down and works really, really hard before November, history might just remember him as. .."
Stewart: ". . . The worst president?"
Oliver: "The last president."
Nervous laughter from the crowd.
Getcher tickets now! On November 7th, the doors will close. --And you might not be allowed back out again! (Actually, January is where I see things getting really interesting. So Live, Love and Learn the heck out of 2008! If things get rough after that, you're all welcome to crash at my house. Big Slashdot slumber party! I bet we could build an awesome new world. We'd have the best battle armor and we could call ourselves the "Brotherhood of Steel" or something cool like that.)
First of all your ancedotal testimony from your 19yo cousin is worthless in the face of this argument, its 2nd hand info and we have not heard form your cousin himself, so that point is dead
EVERYTHING is anecdotal testimony. --Everything except what you experience directly for yourself. EVERYTHING you see on the web, on TV, in books, in newspapers, EVERYTHING is somebody else telling you or showing you something which you didn't see or hear directly for yourself. You have to listen to the claims and judge for yourself what you will allow into your mind to be labeled as 'knowledge'. So saying that the poster's story about his cousin is 'dead' simply because it is anecdotal, is silly. In reality, it's just another piece of information which we each have to measure personally and decide what to do with. I happen to know several people who went through the military process, and I've seen exactly the reaction described by this anecdote. I've also seen the complete opposite reaction; people who went in with false beliefs kindled by propaganda, and who came out again huge cynics of everything government. From that perspective, I find the poster's anecdote believable but all I can do is add it to the "Fool" pile. I'll tabulate later which pile is higher.
Mr Barrack Obama who incidentally is a Muslim
'Muslim' is a belief system. Not a genetic trait. That means you get to pick.
--I was taken to a Christian church in my childhood and my parents are both Christians. Does that make me a Christian? Heck no. I get to believe whatever I want. So do you really truly believe that Obama is a Muslim who follows the teachings of the Koran with the same idiot fervor that makes Christians following their doctrines into Christians? Are you saying that Obama was like, an undercover Muslim secret agent in his Christian church for twenty years?
Obama scares me because he's religious and calls himself a Christian; ALL religious people, no matter which stripe they claim, are retarded on some level. I distrust Christians as much as I distrust Muslims. They're equally capable of putting their brains on hold to do extremely dangerous things en mass. But the claim that Obama is a Muslim is just plain silly, and it comes from people who fear Obama for one reason or another and who are trying to justify that fear by trying to come up with as many irrational 'facts' as they possibly can. That's just lame, dude.
I also read through the anti-Chomsky stuff and even put some stock in it for a while, but that didn't stop me from continuing to read and think and collect knowledge, and eventually I realized that the anti-Chomsky stuff was deliberate garbage designed by the kind of people who have something to lose from his candor. How many prominent Jews speak out against the Israeli government and the crimes taking place in Palestine? Sheesh. --Chomsky certainly doesn't know everything, but he's certainly a wiser and better educated man than you or me. And he's a man of positive intent who opposes fear and selfishness. That counts for a lot. So if you have problems with him, my guess is that they are either based on false info, or that you are an asshole with something to lose.
And finally. . . Your claim that WMD's were found in Iraq is not supported at all by the article you linked to, and that's a right-wing blog site no less! A more complete version of the story on that yellow cake can be found here. The UN knew about that yellow cake before the current war and knew it dated back to when Saddam was trying to build a nuclear facility. That facility was bombed by the Israelis and the remaining yellow cake had been sitting in storage doing nothing since then. The UN weapons sanctions against Iraq were upheld and that yellow cake was not being used to make WMD's.
Yellow cake, it should be pointed out, is just dirt with Uranium oxide in it. You can't even make a dirty bomb with the stuff. It needs full refin
Sure we do. Evil certainly exists in pockets as it always will, but I don't have anybody gunning for my tuna fish. --Or even for my wallet when it comes right down to it. Crassness exists in much larger quantities, so perhaps that's what you mean.
Seriously, ammo is the best investment of your survivalist dollar.
Survivalists all think short-term. --So yeah, ammunition is effective if you're planning to out-live everybody in some lonely, Mad Max hole in the ground.
Ammunition runs out, and so does canned food. They are both short term. Only DNA has a chance of remaining to carry on. The real survivors will be those who collect knowledge, aren't afraid of work, and know how to love their neighbors. And heck, if you want to come and stand on our wall with your rifle to help dissuade the black-leather lunatics in their dune-buggies, then there's positive community, a warm bed and a spot around the fire in it for you. --Unless you're the sort to shoot people for their food, in which case you can just keep moving along. Enjoy the winter and your cabin fever.
When lots of people have weapons, the rules of decent social conduct will continue, and the necessity for communal support will never go away.
I propose in all the other parallel universes, the LHC is activated and destroyed humanity. Thus the one *I* am in, the LHC will never work.
Or it will work, but only give bland results.
Hm. Now there's a thought. --Your safety and continued existence requires that certain otherwise possible realities never manifest. The very fact that you are aware forces the universe into a stable state so that you can remain aware.
Might explain a great deal.
Of course, in MY version of reality, you're just another Red Shirt. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
While the 404 message is perhaps the error MOST often experienced, the error I think which has been experienced by the largest number of people is probably this one. . .
"Please hang up and try your call again. Please hang up NOW. This is a recording."
You can hear her voice just reading that, can't you? That message has been playing for forty or so years. Maybe longer. --Also, I don't know if it was done on purpose or just because it was so baked into the creators' minds, but in the Star Trek TNG universe, the voice of the computer sounds a lot like Ma Bell. I bet you if the phone company used a male voice, the Enterprise compy would also be a dude.
Next up. . .
I don't know how many of you use Photoshop, but I do, and the old versions would freeze up for no apparent reason and drive you nuts when really all that had happened was that you'd used the lasso tool to accidentally select zero pixels, (which is surprisingly easy to do). This locks up a ton of features by design (since EVERYTHING is outside the selected area, which being zero pixels big, also happens to be invisible,) so Photoshop just hangs in that, "WHY THE &#$!* ARE ALL THE OPTIONS GRAYED OUT?!" zone until you think to try de-selecting. If you were first trying to learn how to use Photoshop way back in version 4.0 like I was, this bug was truly frustrating.
So they fixed it, right? --Well, sort of.
It is my considered opinion that Douglas Adams' evil twin brother is still alive and well, and that he works for Adobe.
You see, instead of simply fixing the bug by making it impossible to select zero pixels, (which they did), the Adobe engineers decided to accompany this genius repair work by telling you about it. Every time it happened. Until recently, and maybe even still in the most up-to-date version, (which I've not tried), they throw up an alert window when you select zero pixels saying, Warning: No pixels were selected. --And then to ensure their greatness has been given due respect, they make you press an, 'OK' button before you can continue working. So essentially, if you accidentally tap the mouse button in a certain way, Photoshop freezes unnecessarily and makes you jump through a silly hoop to un-freeze it.
I once deliberately DIDN'T go to a big Adobe presentation at a computer show because I was fairly certain I would start yelling profanities or even tackle one of their reps to pay them back for the hundreds of hours in frustration they had inflicted upon me. "Warning: You are being attacked by a disgruntled user. OK? OK?! SAY IT!"
I was more full of the bad kind of piss and vinegar in my twenties. . .
And finally. . .
When Windows 2000 was being introduced, the Microsoft representative declared, "And there will no longer be a Blue Screen of Death!". The first question from a reporter in the audience, "What color will it be?"
i don't buy groceries and expect to use them more than once
Muffins aren't digital.
Every muffin you eat and want to replace means the farmers and bakers and shipping people need to get busy, and need to be paid for their efforts. A media company, however, doesn't have to invest in more worker hours or physical resources to give you another identical Mickey Mouse. So why should they be paid an equivalent amount for a digital duplicate?
Only one reason. Because people like you have been duped into thinking that Muffins and Mickeys are the same thing. They're not.
They appear to be using a sort of hybrid approach. Isometric wasn't strictly the right word, but the 3D is limited to a locked point of perspective which doesn't show any vanishing points.
The clever thing about that is it allows for the use of very specific textures where you can paint into the texture itself lots of very deliberate light and shadow which is independent of the 3D engine, (the outcroppings of rock and birch tree branches in the outdoor setting are good examples). This kind of illustration looks fantastic, but the problem with it is if you rotate the object it is mapped to beyond a certain point, the illusion fails badly. With a locked perspective, however, you can get away with it and your game environment looks more lush than any fully 3D game could hope to be. Many of the trees don't rotate at all, being combinations of simple 2D branch structures with elaborate texture maps which just shrink and grow according to distance. The more complex trees are particularly amazing; they are static 3D objects in locked perspectives, and have really effective limited rotations; as they rotate away from one texture map making up a portion of a gnarly tree trunk, they bring a new texture into view which was painted using the correct lighting for that particular angle. The more I look at their work, the more impressed I am. There are only a couple of spots where the illusion fails. The roots on the flagstones at the cave entrance, for instance, don't work.
This is the kind of game I'd like to buy for a friend so I can watch them play and cheer them on without having to do all the mind-numbing work of actually having to fight all those annoying monsters myself!
That does look quite impressive. The broad stroke watercolor brush style lend themselves well to rendering in 3D, and they used some neat tricks, (keeping some objects 'flat' even through rotations), to help capture the style. It still has that '3D' look though, but the designers have certainly gone to some effort to temper it.
I quit gaming a few years ago because I was tired of pour my life energy into the bottomless pit of interactive illusions, but it hasn't stopped me from appreciating a nice bit of design.
--I really like the isometric approach; it allows the design team to use artwork generated by actual painters and illustrators rather than 3D engine-workers. It'll be a neat day when you can create in 3D the same kind of evocative visual character in a tree stump or a bit of masonry as an artist can do with a pencil and few tubes of gauche, but that day hasn't arrived yet. And so, Diablo III is going to look oh-so-much prettier than any 3D game can at the moment.
It's a nice Saturday, so I thought I'd share some light reading with everybody; I've uploaded in its entirety a copy of Walter Bowart's Operation Mind Control for anybody who wants to read it. (It's a text-searchable PDF scan of the book. Thanks to whoever scanned it.)
This book was derived largely from papers acquired through the FOIA, and it is quite clear about how advanced the military was in the field of mind-control and mind-reading. (Skip ahead to chapter 18 after you take a moment to read the author's forward.) It was also first published back in 1978. ..
In 1975 a primitive "mind-reading machine" was tested at the Stanford Research Institute. The machine is a computer which can recognize a limited amount of words by monitoring a person's silent thoughts. This technique relies upon the discovery that brain wave tracings taken with an electroencephalograph (EEG) show distinctive patterns that correlate with individual words--whether the words are spoken aloud or merely subvocalized (thought of).
The computer initially used audio equipment to listen to the words the subject spoke. (At first the vocabulary was limited to "up," "down," "left," and "right.") At the same time the computer heard the words, it monitored the EEG impulses coming from electrodes pasted to the subject's head and responded by turning a camera in the direction indicated. After a few repetitions of the procedure, the computer's hearing was turned off and it responded solely to the EEG "thoughts." It moved a television camera in the directions ordered by the subject's thoughts alone!
I find that most of the technology is actually terribly simple and straight forward. If it works, it gets developed. It really isn't rocket science. The large portion of Bowart's book is on mind-control through drugs, hypnosis and radio/sonics. Again, very simple concepts but very advanced at the same time; the stuff he talks about makes Joss Whedon's new show, Doll House looks simplistic, and that's writing from the 70's.
"They use hypnosis and hypnotic drugs. They also use electronic manipulation of the brain. They use ultrasonics, which will boil your brain. When they use hypnosis, they'll at the same time be using a set of earphones which repeat 'You do not know this or that,' over and over. They turn on the sonics at the same time, and the electrical patterns which give you memory are scrambled. You can't hear the ultrasonics and you can't feel it, unless they leave it on-- then it boils your gray matter."
Unless the assassin had done the same research I had, he could only have known this through firsthand experience. The CIA documents released in 1976 revealed that ultrasonic research was undertaken for a period of more than twenty years. But the documents said that the research had stopped, so I asked him about that.
"Yeah. The research has stopped. They've gone operational. It ain't research any more. They know how to do it," he said.
I'd replace the word 'fear' with the term 'recognize'.
Fear is emotional, but once you explore and understand all the facts surrounding a potential threat, the emotion vanishes. I'm not afraid of fire, but I recognize that fire can cause me terrible harm if I don't handle it correctly. In the same way, I really don't fear any of the threats being hurled at us through the media. I've learned they are largely fabricated horseshit which can be dealt with by any number of means which don't require me to run around flailing like an idiot.
I'm definitely of the opinion that conservatives are mentally stunted, (can't tell their W's from their M's), but that's okay. The world is set up to teach us all the lessons we need in order to grow. The lesson in this case is why following fear and mentally stunted leaders is disastrous. Souls learn only through repeated pains, so you dump a ton of souls on the planet and let them do their thing. To try to control the less advanced souls through drugs and behavior modification slows down the process; you can only truly learn from mistakes and applied experiences. Let the retards run free and bang into stuff. We all have to go through the process; we've all been retarded. Heck even at the highest forms achievable on this plane, the best of us are barely functional.
But in my personal life, I try to keep the conservatives at a distance. They can lead their fear-filled, mentally challenged, inflexible viewpoints and the associated disasters they call 'lives' without my active participation! It's far too draining to spend time around that bunch of dysfunctional stiffs; "Love Jesus while killing them A-rabs and punishing the poor!" What a travesty of incompatible thinking processes; being in a roomful of conservatives is like experiencing a head-on train collision everybody is pretending not to see.
Nice post! Very precise and well thought-out. --My last was done while very sleepy and I was later smacking myself for the sloppiness evidenced in it. I thought it likely that you were going to hammer me on a couple of the dafter elements but you stayed in-game, as it were. Much appreciated.
Anyway, you continue to keep this interesting, so I'd like to address a couple of your points if you'll forgive the further indulgence. ..
That study is much like the cold fusion. It is a very interesting result, it is worthy of further testing, but the overwhelming likelihood is that it will not hold up.
The study was actually two studies; the first, done in the Eighties, recorded a strange variance in the decay rates of two radioactive substances. This was not disputed, and indeed has continued to be a source of some confusion among scientists who have had trouble pinning down the exact rates of decay over the years. Decay rates are not supposed to vary at all, being considered one of the most predictable phenomenons known. The second study, done just recently was simply a matter of noting that the variance in decay rates happened to line up in time with where the Sun was in relation to the Earth.
I don't see how you manage to determine that the "overwhelming likelihood is that it will not hold up." To say, 'overwhelming' is rather extreme, and indicates either some knowledge of the study which nobody else appears to have, or an unfair bias. --You outlined your primary biases very effectively, but to say the likelihood is 'overwhelming' suggests a prejudice far beyond your own criteria. Something to think about. --And keep in mind that only the 1% 'lone nut' (like me) are suggesting any connection to astrology at all, and who I should add, are soundly glared at for doing so, also, I would suspect if they had the chance, by the researchers themselves.
I've looked to different degrees into a astrology and a number of comparable areas. Everything that I have seen is that astrology and the like have no rational basis for working, and have no credible evidence of success.
What have you looked at? I've seen a lot of hogwash in my own explorations; indeed, I tend to think that it dominates the spectrum. I can suggest some sources I found credible if you are interested.
Indeed, one of the things I had the opportunity to study at length was stage magic and through these contacts, came across a very detailed manual on how to perform cold reading. In combination with my researches into hypnosis and similar areas, this manual was invaluable in helping to sift out the chaff from the wheat. Because, I must emphasis, you are entirely correct in asserting the various ways self-deception creeps into the field of astrology. It does not however, negate the illogic of the argument, "All cows are animals, therefore all animals are cows," fallacy which I see so often used in this context.
I think we agree that claimed research can be legitimately be identified as unreliable or total junk for concrete reasons. My position is that not all research on this subject is unreliable.
The validity of our opposing positions can only be determined through a review of a long list of studies, which I am afraid I am not predisposed to doing.
My ancillary position is simply that these studies, while fascinating, are not necessary for a personal assessment if that assessment is undertaken sensibly. I do not need to reference studies on water to know that it is wet. I just need to jump in.
Except there are millions of turtle-fans in the backyard talking about this turtle, and thousands of researchers have scoured the backyard asking everyone where's the turtle, and they go with video cameras to document their exploration. Not only can't they get any video of the turtle, they cant find any turtle droppings or turtle tracks or anything else.
Well, this it is true that there are plenty of 'turtle' fans, but it is not true that they have not found any tu
You repeated this theme several times, and I don't think it fair. You know and directly mentioned that I am fully open to science exploring and testing it.
Just responding to the repeated series of examples you have offered. I'll stop now, as you seem to have as well. I think we both understand one another's core arguments.
The only thing I will add is this. . . It still sounds to me as though you are waiting for somebody else to tell you what to think on this subject, when it is very easy to test it for yourself. It's not hard to do, and no scientist worth his or her salt would attempt to write off a phenomenon without even looking at it first. This is the thing I find most frustrating with people who are so very opposed to astrology; they've never even bothered to look for themselves, and quote endless reasons for why this refusal is valid. It's like a kid crying out, "I saw a turtle in the backyard! Come see!" And the adults in the room shaking their heads saying, "No, I will not come see. You have to prove that you saw a turtle, which you cannot do, and so I refuse to believe you." "But you can just come and see for yourself." "Oh, silly child. When you grow up, you will understand."
Many hundreds of astrologers have been tested and when given personality profiles they consistently fail to pair them with birth charts any better than random chance. Studies have been done on thousands of people born within minutes of each other and tracked for decades, and they don't show any more correlation with each other than the general public. It only takes a few moments on Google to find this sort of info.
Three things; 1. There have also been studies which DO show correlation. I didn't find the results of those ones compelling either, as I've yet to see any study which was designed in a manner which I thought was satisfactory. 2. I explained several of my reasons for acknowledging why the scientific process held inherent weaknesses which contribute to poor study design, and those objections still stand. You have not mentioned if or why you disagree, so I am wondering if you have simply ignored those points? That in itself would be interesting. 3. I have found that the subjectivity of astrology makes it almost impossible for an astrologer to work backwards, as it were. Humans are far too complex to be able to observe their behavior and then guess which of the couple million or so combinations of stellar influences happen to be affecting them. It's arrogance and self-delusion on the part of the astrologer, and any study which refutes astrology based on arrogant astrologers performing side-show cold-reading nonsense can only come to a negative conclusion. Such science, while valid enough, doesn't prove anything about the phenomenon itself except that it cannot be measured in this manner.
So that's all. There's not really anything further to add except that I think your reasons for rejecting astrology are incomplete and unsound, and that you are not working with a full enough set of experiences to be able to validate your rejection. Further you seem to be unaware of or are ignoring some rather compelling examples of scientifically observed systems which do suggest that solar bodies have unexpected effects on small systems, (that decay rate study being an example which I mentioned now twice but which you seem to be ignoring for some reason.)
By contrast, you seem to think it expedient to NOT collect any direct experience to form your conclusions because, I gather, you don't trust in your senses or personal ability to detect real pattern from false pattern. And this is the crux of the matter. . .
I believe that even acknowledging the inherent ability for humans to be tricked, that with enough awareness and knowledge, it is not just possible, but expedient for humans to collect information with their senses and use their ability to sort through the resulting patterns they see in the world. Humans have the potential to be smarter and more capable than you give us credit.
I have the impression that INT's are generally pretty disinclined to astrology and the like, so I'm wondering if you selected that particular combo because that is what you tested as?
Nah. Just randomly grabbed four letters from the available eight after I wikied the thing to refresh my memory.
Kinda amusing that I got you all fired up for it. My thoughts the whole time writing it were "Astrology is pure superstition, and here's why".
Oh, sure, I recognize that, but I also recognize a person with both social skills and a fully functioning brain. Have you tried having a conversation with some of the posters around here? Even if you are inclined to disagree with me on every count, you at least know how to have fun pulling ideas apart while remaining positive and polite. A lot of people have yet to learn how to separate the subject from the ego.
I am majorly about "Science is right and the rest is bunkum", and so big on the science view that I am philosophically dedicated to the number #1 rule of science that everything is open to testing and revision based on the evidence.
I'm the same way, with the exception that I recognize that science is young and that just because it hasn't found a way to explain certain phenomenon doesn't mean that those phenomenon don't exist. And astrology is one of several intriguing subjects as it drifts into an area of awareness which demands that the observer take responsibility for all observations and not rely on others to validate their experiences. This presents a real stumbling block for scientists.
--Astrology is not as far into that zone as say, those who report having dreams. (You cannot prove to have had a dream. The best we can do is observe activities within the brain, but the experiences themselves belong only to the observer. Luckily, everybody dreams, and so people are not ridiculed for claiming to have had the experiences they claim.) There are many powerful experiences of this nature which rely so heavily upon the actual process of cognition that they are not easily or sometimes even possible to validate through the material application of scientific instruments. In such areas, there literally is a great deal of truth to, "I'll see it when I believe it." And the converse is also true, "I won't see it unless I believe it." People who work within the sciences, (I've grown up with many of them), tend to give away their power to others. --The power to have self-confidence, that is. They cannot feel secure unless an authority figure of some kind nods to them and says, "Yes, you are right."
But astrology is really interesting in this manner; it is a bridge of sorts, because it exists in a half-way zone; it can be measured and recorded, and it has rules which work, but there is a leap required. --Not a leap of faith, because it does have the ability to smack you on the nose. It's more a leap of courage. All you have to do is crack a book and look at the patterns. Many in the science community simply refuse to do this. Refuse! A whole life lived without ever even looking. Part of the problem is that it IS a bridge; if astrology works, then what else does that imply? Scientifically-minded people, I think, are the most liable to see all the implications and will be unable to resist pulling at the cloth; regular folks tend to be more docile and will not see the threads or that the whole of the safe and accepted reality falls apart when you pull those threads.
Anyway. . , I also recognize that science and people in general are prone to self-deception in order to maintain a perception of reality which stays within a set of often unspoken social rules. In the same way most believe that, "I'm not affected by advertising," people in the scientific realm believe that they are not affected by groupthink. But there are many examples of self-deception happening within the halls of academia, and they are indeed very similar in character to the kinds of flaws often pointed out in people who are foo
Gates is now in that portion of his career where he wants to leave a legacy of having not lived an evil, selfish life. Very rich people have done this before. In retirement, they realize the world thinks they're dicks, and without work to fill their attention and worlds to conquer, it's time for a little mid-life narcissism.
This isn't about selling Windows. It's about white-washing the crust of evil so that he can feel good about himself in the world's eyes, and Bill the conqueror is perfectly willing to blow millions of dollars to make sure we all love him. He's even gotten involved with one of the most influential charitable organizations in the world, (though in classic Bill style, it's one which divides people. Planned Parenthood, beneath it's brochure values is based on the idea that the human population needs executive control to make sure only the right people have babies. Harsh, I know, but check out the history. There's been a lot of scrubbing, but it's foundation is rather creepy.)
How about this, Bill: Give me ten million dollars and I'll tell everybody you're a great guy.
Brr. Wow. I just went there in my head for a second. Personal insight; I just learned that I actually wouldn't shill for Bill.
I read stuff like your post and I get all pumped up about putting together a big study. It would definitely have to be carefully designed and double blinded because I obviously have my biases well in place after all my informal tinkering.
I've read about a few studies, and there was in fact one involving birth date twins; where the researchers went through birth records looking for people who were born at exactly the same time all over the country and then contacted the people in an effort to measure patterns. I'm not sure what their measurement criteria were, (I wasn't able to find the actual study), but the overall results came back with a statistical down the middle which confirmed nothing but the expected numerical average. Again, the problem comes with the matter being so subjective in nature. How do you reliably test for qualities of personality? I was thinking of perhaps using one of those detailed personality tests which advertising companies used to powerful effect in the sixties while trying to work out how to better market their goods; the ones which end up with a reliable map. (You know the ones which end up with people saying, "Yeah, I took the Myers Briggs test, and I'm an I N T P.") --Though, I'm not convinced that would do the trick.
One of the things I noticed when exploring the Asian system was that you could see broad behavior profiles for classes in schools; since everybody in a given year would predominantly be one type of animal. Having gone through a year of 'Dogs', I could see all manner of very different people all around me, individuals who seemed to exemplify all manner of different personalities. But when I pulled back the lens, so to speak, I did notice that taking the whole journey through Jr. High for three years did take on an overall quality which was notably different from a year filled with Rats or Monkeys or what have you. A friend of mine went through a year of Monkeys, and the number of deaths, disasters and general calamity among the students due to over-zealous, er. . , 'monkeying' around was ridiculously high and actually quite creative, whereas the Dog year was on the whole quite mellow with lots of camaraderie. In traveling through life these sorts of 'positives' add up rather quickly, but of course, from a clinical perspective, the results are basically useless.
The test you suggest where you give out personality descriptions and ask people to pick the one which best suits them sounds promising. With a good design and a large enough sample, I think I might feel confident in the results. It would be a huge challenge to design it correctly, though. Just getting people to take the test at all would be a filter of its own sort; coming up with a truly random sample of people willing and capable of reading through sixty or more pages of detailed descriptions. I wouldn't feel confident with just the 12 basic signs in the Asian calendar; The differences between a "Wood Monkey" and a "Metal Monkey" are often stark, and there are five different elements. For even finer calibration, I'd be happiest combining it with the 12 Western signs, which also play a role. --Because it is very true, there are more than 12 different people out there.
When I do the math, multiplying the various respected aspects astrologers look at when working with a person's profile, the number of possible combinations balloons geometrically.
Just to be a completest, I'll note the following. . . In Western astrology, the big personality indexes include 12 Sun signs, 12 Rising signs, and 12 Moon signs, all of which play a significant role in how a person is affected. Then for the Asian system, there are 12 year signs, 12 hour signs and 5 elements. The basic total without taking any of the lesser influences into account is (12 to the power of 5) x 5. --Whether you are Male or Female bends the results again, so the whole number needs to be doubled up. The Asians also consider which season you were born in to be important, but I think there may be some over-lap with
Slashdot Mirror
The eee1000H is now around $450, and it's my new best friend. The nearly-full keyboard might as well be a full keyboard. The 10" screen is big enough to use with Photoshop in surprising comfort. Solid battery time. Great user community. --And all the other good things you've heard already from people. It's all true.
The only thing some people find is that it's a tad on the heavy side. For me, though, I actually like this. If a device is too light, I find it feels too much like a cheap toy. I use old Nortel phones which weigh a ton so they don't rattle around like Christmas tree ornaments. When I put something on a table, I like it to stay put. But it's certainly not too heavy to grab and carry with ease. --I find I treat the eee1000H the same way I might treat a smallish school text or a biggish fiction hardcover. It goes where I go, and that's the most significant and noticeable difference between it and my old lappy; the laptop is like re-deployable furniture, whereas the eee is actually immediately useful all the time no matter where I am around the house/office. I'm not actually sure what I'd do to improve it.
The last time I bought something I was this satisfied with, (to the point of smugness), was the Mini-Leatherman. --Not those silly new ones they call the 'squirt', but the original from 20 years ago. I still use that thing all the time, and it's still in excellent shape because it was built to last forever. --Of course, even the eee1000H isn't as cool as my fold-up pliers, nor will it last for anywhere nearly as long. But to be fair, proof man's divinity lies in the Mini-Leatherman, so the bar is pretty much impossibly high. The eee1000H comes fairly close, though.
-FL
Ugh. It never fails. Just when I begin to soften my attitude toward Microsoft, something comes along to remind me why I held that attitude in the first place.
-FL
While perusing the conspiracy theories from the murkiest part of the deep end, I came across these two items. . . Please don't mod them down just yet; these ones I don't buy into completely, (well, not completely) and I present them more in the form of an interesting sociological "Hmmm". (Have you ever tried cataloging this stuff?)
Okay. So two items. . .
1. The U.S. is the largest experimental society today; can you control an entire people through technology and brain washing rather than force? How is it done and what are the advantages, if any?
2. Regardless of the outcome, the idea is that all Semitic and Caucasian people are just not suitable for the New World. They'll make good fodder and they can be used to run the meat-grinder, but when all the dust settles and the blood is hosed off the streets, the preferred genetic strain is what we see to have been bred in China and countries of similar genetic stock. Why? Get ready for it, and this is where your mod-muscles will twitch: "The Asian gene type is more suitable for population control. They're more obedient."
Just think: there are people in positions of power who live by these kinds of ideas. I've met some of them.
Here's a riddle: "How many elitists does it take to put a whack-job conspiracy theory into practical application?"
Answer: "None. They create an economic reality where the peasantry must obey or starve and then hire them to do it on their behalf."
On a totally unrelated note, Fallout 3 is coming out this October.
-FL
There is plenty evidence showing the current problem is from government intervention in getting banks to make loans to people that are overly risky.
Okay, did you actually, really just try to blame the current economic crisis on people who didn't follow the strictures of the 'Free Market' obediently enough?
That is the most bugged-out bit of spin-doctored delusional insanity I've heard today, --and it's pushing 1 o'clock, so I've already heard a ton of bullshit! "Government intervention in getting banks to make loans to people".?????
Twist that sucker! Make it sing the tune you want!
--Because, you are right! There was government intervention. But the intervening act was to remove intervention. See there? Double-negative. Because it was in fact an act of Deregulation carried out under the aegis of "Free Market Capitalism." --The government deliberately prevented states from exercising their existing regulatory laws which would have punished the banks for predatory lending! In true psychopathic style, Bush-co deliberately set up the housing crisis time bomb by preventing regulation of the mortgage market so that lower level sociopaths could move in and screw people. Attorneys general from 50 states all protested a blue streak, but Bush-co ignored them, and blind worshippers of the 'Free Market' were so brainwashed that they actually cheered! Eliot Spitzer does a good job in clarifying the legal gymnastics used to perpetrate the home lending mess.
So, just to be very clear and leave no allowance for wiggle-room, you had that one backwards. Re-do.
The idea of a "free market", what it is, what it means, and how it works, is much older than the Bush and Reagan presidencies. IIRC the modern idea traces back to the 1700s in England. It is not a belief or a religion. It is the historically proven most effective way for people to organize and be productive.
Now hold on. It is a "Historically proven most effective way for people to organize"? Except, you don't have to actually believe in it or follow any sort of philosophy in order to organize yourself accordingly? So how do you know if you're doing it right? --Because you can obviously do it 'wrong', otherwise people wouldn't exist to gush on about it with such fervor, (you've heard them. I suspect you might even BE one of them). --And there wouldn't be a Bush-co to fight for 'right' way of doing things. Oh, and let's not forget that the 'Free Marekt' belief system isn't really there. The Free Market is just the 'way' things are. It's like magic, and by gum they'll tie your hands behind your back if you don't believe in it with the same certainty that they deign proper!
Pardon me, but that's EXACTLY like a religion. The fact that it's based on an actual principal (supply and demand) doesn't change the fact that it has ballooned into a belief system.
And, yeah, I know it's origins go further back than Reagan. But with generational gaps and new preachers, you get updated and newly energized versions of the same old sermons. That's all I was referring to.
Every other system has either not worked or been markedly less effective. I hope the connection between the incredible increase in productivity and lives saved in countries with relatively free markets is understood by you.
Oh just stop it with that. That's a tired old chestnut, and not even you truly believe it, otherwise you wouldn't have dropped in that, 'relatively' qualifier. I live in Canada, which has a lot more regulation than the U.S., and having traveled extensively in both countries over the last couple of decades, I can tell you that I'm damned happy to have a maple leaf on my passport. --Those portions of the U.S. where they refuse to regulate things are just plain screwed up and unfit for human life. Regulation very simply doesn't mean So
Pardon my rant; it is not directed at you necessarily, but I'm so fed up with this whole "Free Market As Religion" nonsense that your little blurb broke my camel's back today.
Why do people get so pentecostal about it? It's like waxing poetic about gravity or something. --Except Newton wasn't pushing his theory for manipulative reasons. Take a look at the original proponents of Free Market theory; they're in tight with the Reagan/Bush family tree, and now we have Bush back-pedaling on the theory with his 700 Billion dollar bailout because, as it happens, Free Market theory certainly does work. It's just that in the final analysis, a 'market correction' can equal 'the burning of Rome'.
The Free Market doesn't care if the human population gets decimated to accommodate the law of the jungle. But I do. And guess what? If I decide to tweak the jungle rules by declaring open season on Saber-toothed tigers, rather than let them run wild according to some cultist philosophy, then I betcha my tribe will live longer than the idiot monkeys clinging to their trees because of some half-baked theory, --sold to them by the freakin' Tigers. The Wallstreet gurus came up with the damned theory in order to keep everybody else enslaved. It wasn't for our good. It was for their good. And you can tell! --ANY theory which circles so closely around dogma and knee-jerk emotionalism and fear, is suspect. Oooooh. Socialism is scaaaaary. Feel your breast pound with anxiety! --Anti-socialist thinking has all the same earmarks as your friendly neighborhood church brainwashing clinic. But despite this, half the geeks around here twaddle on into the same old traps just because the words used by the preacher happen to be different. Instead of Preachers, we have Economists. Instead of a never-to-be-questioned fairy in the sky, we have the never-to-be-questioned state-sanctioned, group-think, "Almost-Science". --Official Culture, masquerading as Enlightened Thought.
All people need to do is look for the patterns, and in the case of Free Market Economics, the patterns are painfully obvious: Fervent Believers repeating Mantras over and over and over. Newton didn't foam at the mouth or get an endorphin rush from giving sermon on the mount speeches about the laws of motion. So when you see this kind of behavior, you can be damned sure that there it's being pumped on TV by some funding agency with an agenda, or it's being force fed into bright-eyed university kids by charismatic professors giving sermons instructing them according to their own good book.
So that's my rant.
Again I want to stress that this isn't aimed at you specifically, so I'm sorry for sounding brutal. --Though I will say that your point about the shape of the netbook market, while somewhat correct, isn't determined by the Free Market alone. There is one force which is very often over-looked: With the enough cash and enough skilled people, the 'free' market can be brainwashed into buying any damned thing industry feels like selling them. They can sell millions of gallons of black fizzy water in red cans and make people think they actually like it. They can sell twice as many razor blades forever if they can somehow just convince women that body hair is 'dirty'. --They can make people buy oil at $100 a barrel if they can sell people the right war. --This aspect of the 'Free Market' is never mentioned in the sermons, and the reason is that it blows the theory so full of holes that it sinks back to its natural, un-inflated level of importance. Because supply and demand do indeed have an effect on how stuff works; but it's not a hard and fast rule which will bring humanity into some kind of free-market nirvana where we can all stop thinking and rest easy on our pre-fab sound-biten economic theories.
If we do that, then we might just as well be having seizures while speaking in tongues.
-FL
Greatest Show On Earth! Everybody will be watching! The Game, the Meta Game, and the Meta-Meta Game! --Each one alone worth the price of admission!
Don't miss it!
Nobody knows what will happen! Nuclear exchanges not ruled out!
Getcher tickets now! As John Oliver put it:
"George Bush will not be remembered by history as the best president. . , but if he buckles down and works really, really hard before November, history might just remember him as. . ."
Stewart: ". . . The worst president?"
Oliver: "The last president."
Nervous laughter from the crowd.
Getcher tickets now! On November 7th, the doors will close. --And you might not be allowed back out again! (Actually, January is where I see things getting really interesting. So Live, Love and Learn the heck out of 2008! If things get rough after that, you're all welcome to crash at my house. Big Slashdot slumber party! I bet we could build an awesome new world. We'd have the best battle armor and we could call ourselves the "Brotherhood of Steel" or something cool like that.)
Cheers all, do your best and fear nothing!
-FL
First of all your ancedotal testimony from your 19yo cousin is worthless in the face of this argument, its 2nd hand info and we have not heard form your cousin himself, so that point is dead
EVERYTHING is anecdotal testimony. --Everything except what you experience directly for yourself. EVERYTHING you see on the web, on TV, in books, in newspapers, EVERYTHING is somebody else telling you or showing you something which you didn't see or hear directly for yourself. You have to listen to the claims and judge for yourself what you will allow into your mind to be labeled as 'knowledge'. So saying that the poster's story about his cousin is 'dead' simply because it is anecdotal, is silly. In reality, it's just another piece of information which we each have to measure personally and decide what to do with. I happen to know several people who went through the military process, and I've seen exactly the reaction described by this anecdote. I've also seen the complete opposite reaction; people who went in with false beliefs kindled by propaganda, and who came out again huge cynics of everything government. From that perspective, I find the poster's anecdote believable but all I can do is add it to the "Fool" pile. I'll tabulate later which pile is higher.
Mr Barrack Obama who incidentally is a Muslim
'Muslim' is a belief system. Not a genetic trait. That means you get to pick.
--I was taken to a Christian church in my childhood and my parents are both Christians. Does that make me a Christian? Heck no. I get to believe whatever I want. So do you really truly believe that Obama is a Muslim who follows the teachings of the Koran with the same idiot fervor that makes Christians following their doctrines into Christians? Are you saying that Obama was like, an undercover Muslim secret agent in his Christian church for twenty years?
Obama scares me because he's religious and calls himself a Christian; ALL religious people, no matter which stripe they claim, are retarded on some level. I distrust Christians as much as I distrust Muslims. They're equally capable of putting their brains on hold to do extremely dangerous things en mass. But the claim that Obama is a Muslim is just plain silly, and it comes from people who fear Obama for one reason or another and who are trying to justify that fear by trying to come up with as many irrational 'facts' as they possibly can. That's just lame, dude.
I also read through the anti-Chomsky stuff and even put some stock in it for a while, but that didn't stop me from continuing to read and think and collect knowledge, and eventually I realized that the anti-Chomsky stuff was deliberate garbage designed by the kind of people who have something to lose from his candor. How many prominent Jews speak out against the Israeli government and the crimes taking place in Palestine? Sheesh. --Chomsky certainly doesn't know everything, but he's certainly a wiser and better educated man than you or me. And he's a man of positive intent who opposes fear and selfishness. That counts for a lot. So if you have problems with him, my guess is that they are either based on false info, or that you are an asshole with something to lose.
And finally. . . Your claim that WMD's were found in Iraq is not supported at all by the article you linked to, and that's a right-wing blog site no less! A more complete version of the story on that yellow cake can be found here. The UN knew about that yellow cake before the current war and knew it dated back to when Saddam was trying to build a nuclear facility. That facility was bombed by the Israelis and the remaining yellow cake had been sitting in storage doing nothing since then. The UN weapons sanctions against Iraq were upheld and that yellow cake was not being used to make WMD's.
Yellow cake, it should be pointed out, is just dirt with Uranium oxide in it. You can't even make a dirty bomb with the stuff. It needs full refin
Ha! We don't have "decent social conduct" today.
Sure we do. Evil certainly exists in pockets as it always will, but I don't have anybody gunning for my tuna fish. --Or even for my wallet when it comes right down to it. Crassness exists in much larger quantities, so perhaps that's what you mean.
-FL
Seriously, ammo is the best investment of your survivalist dollar.
Survivalists all think short-term. --So yeah, ammunition is effective if you're planning to out-live everybody in some lonely, Mad Max hole in the ground.
Ammunition runs out, and so does canned food. They are both short term. Only DNA has a chance of remaining to carry on. The real survivors will be those who collect knowledge, aren't afraid of work, and know how to love their neighbors. And heck, if you want to come and stand on our wall with your rifle to help dissuade the black-leather lunatics in their dune-buggies, then there's positive community, a warm bed and a spot around the fire in it for you. --Unless you're the sort to shoot people for their food, in which case you can just keep moving along. Enjoy the winter and your cabin fever.
When lots of people have weapons, the rules of decent social conduct will continue, and the necessity for communal support will never go away.
-FL
I propose in all the other parallel universes, the LHC is activated and destroyed humanity. Thus the one *I* am in, the LHC will never work.
Or it will work, but only give bland results.
Hm. Now there's a thought. --Your safety and continued existence requires that certain otherwise possible realities never manifest. The very fact that you are aware forces the universe into a stable state so that you can remain aware.
Might explain a great deal.
Of course, in MY version of reality, you're just another Red Shirt. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
-FL
While the 404 message is perhaps the error MOST often experienced, the error I think which has been experienced by the largest number of people is probably this one. . .
"Please hang up and try your call again. Please hang up NOW. This is a recording."
You can hear her voice just reading that, can't you? That message has been playing for forty or so years. Maybe longer. --Also, I don't know if it was done on purpose or just because it was so baked into the creators' minds, but in the Star Trek TNG universe, the voice of the computer sounds a lot like Ma Bell. I bet you if the phone company used a male voice, the Enterprise compy would also be a dude.
Next up. . .
I don't know how many of you use Photoshop, but I do, and the old versions would freeze up for no apparent reason and drive you nuts when really all that had happened was that you'd used the lasso tool to accidentally select zero pixels, (which is surprisingly easy to do). This locks up a ton of features by design (since EVERYTHING is outside the selected area, which being zero pixels big, also happens to be invisible,) so Photoshop just hangs in that, "WHY THE &#$!* ARE ALL THE OPTIONS GRAYED OUT?!" zone until you think to try de-selecting. If you were first trying to learn how to use Photoshop way back in version 4.0 like I was, this bug was truly frustrating.
So they fixed it, right? --Well, sort of.
It is my considered opinion that Douglas Adams' evil twin brother is still alive and well, and that he works for Adobe.
You see, instead of simply fixing the bug by making it impossible to select zero pixels, (which they did), the Adobe engineers decided to accompany this genius repair work by telling you about it. Every time it happened. Until recently, and maybe even still in the most up-to-date version, (which I've not tried), they throw up an alert window when you select zero pixels saying, Warning: No pixels were selected. --And then to ensure their greatness has been given due respect, they make you press an, 'OK' button before you can continue working. So essentially, if you accidentally tap the mouse button in a certain way, Photoshop freezes unnecessarily and makes you jump through a silly hoop to un-freeze it.
I once deliberately DIDN'T go to a big Adobe presentation at a computer show because I was fairly certain I would start yelling profanities or even tackle one of their reps to pay them back for the hundreds of hours in frustration they had inflicted upon me. "Warning: You are being attacked by a disgruntled user. OK? OK?! SAY IT!"
I was more full of the bad kind of piss and vinegar in my twenties. . .
And finally. . .
When Windows 2000 was being introduced, the Microsoft representative declared, "And there will no longer be a Blue Screen of Death!". The first question from a reporter in the audience, "What color will it be?"
-FL
i don't buy groceries and expect to use them more than once
Muffins aren't digital.
Every muffin you eat and want to replace means the farmers and bakers and shipping people need to get busy, and need to be paid for their efforts. A media company, however, doesn't have to invest in more worker hours or physical resources to give you another identical Mickey Mouse. So why should they be paid an equivalent amount for a digital duplicate?
Only one reason. Because people like you have been duped into thinking that Muffins and Mickeys are the same thing. They're not.
-FL
They appear to be using a sort of hybrid approach. Isometric wasn't strictly the right word, but the 3D is limited to a locked point of perspective which doesn't show any vanishing points.
The clever thing about that is it allows for the use of very specific textures where you can paint into the texture itself lots of very deliberate light and shadow which is independent of the 3D engine, (the outcroppings of rock and birch tree branches in the outdoor setting are good examples). This kind of illustration looks fantastic, but the problem with it is if you rotate the object it is mapped to beyond a certain point, the illusion fails badly. With a locked perspective, however, you can get away with it and your game environment looks more lush than any fully 3D game could hope to be. Many of the trees don't rotate at all, being combinations of simple 2D branch structures with elaborate texture maps which just shrink and grow according to distance. The more complex trees are particularly amazing; they are static 3D objects in locked perspectives, and have really effective limited rotations; as they rotate away from one texture map making up a portion of a gnarly tree trunk, they bring a new texture into view which was painted using the correct lighting for that particular angle. The more I look at their work, the more impressed I am. There are only a couple of spots where the illusion fails. The roots on the flagstones at the cave entrance, for instance, don't work.
This is the kind of game I'd like to buy for a friend so I can watch them play and cheer them on without having to do all the mind-numbing work of actually having to fight all those annoying monsters myself!
-FL
Perhaps the 3D artists just need to use more tubes of tactlessness to catch up with their pencil-and-paper peers?
It's possible, but they'd need to use the right kind of brusk. Also, I think those kinds of paints are less palatable.
-FL
That does look quite impressive. The broad stroke watercolor brush style lend themselves well to rendering in 3D, and they used some neat tricks, (keeping some objects 'flat' even through rotations), to help capture the style. It still has that '3D' look though, but the designers have certainly gone to some effort to temper it.
-FL
I quit gaming a few years ago because I was tired of pour my life energy into the bottomless pit of interactive illusions, but it hasn't stopped me from appreciating a nice bit of design.
--I really like the isometric approach; it allows the design team to use artwork generated by actual painters and illustrators rather than 3D engine-workers. It'll be a neat day when you can create in 3D the same kind of evocative visual character in a tree stump or a bit of masonry as an artist can do with a pencil and few tubes of gauche, but that day hasn't arrived yet. And so, Diablo III is going to look oh-so-much prettier than any 3D game can at the moment.
-FL
It's a nice Saturday, so I thought I'd share some light reading with everybody; I've uploaded in its entirety a copy of Walter Bowart's Operation Mind Control for anybody who wants to read it. (It's a text-searchable PDF scan of the book. Thanks to whoever scanned it.)
This book was derived largely from papers acquired through the FOIA, and it is quite clear about how advanced the military was in the field of mind-control and mind-reading. (Skip ahead to chapter 18 after you take a moment to read the author's forward.) It was also first published back in 1978. . .
I find that most of the technology is actually terribly simple and straight forward. If it works, it gets developed. It really isn't rocket science. The large portion of Bowart's book is on mind-control through drugs, hypnosis and radio/sonics. Again, very simple concepts but very advanced at the same time; the stuff he talks about makes Joss Whedon's new show, Doll House looks simplistic, and that's writing from the 70's.
-FL
I'd replace the word 'fear' with the term 'recognize'.
Fear is emotional, but once you explore and understand all the facts surrounding a potential threat, the emotion vanishes. I'm not afraid of fire, but I recognize that fire can cause me terrible harm if I don't handle it correctly. In the same way, I really don't fear any of the threats being hurled at us through the media. I've learned they are largely fabricated horseshit which can be dealt with by any number of means which don't require me to run around flailing like an idiot.
Knowledge protects.
-FL
The system works just fine.
I'm definitely of the opinion that conservatives are mentally stunted, (can't tell their W's from their M's), but that's okay. The world is set up to teach us all the lessons we need in order to grow. The lesson in this case is why following fear and mentally stunted leaders is disastrous. Souls learn only through repeated pains, so you dump a ton of souls on the planet and let them do their thing. To try to control the less advanced souls through drugs and behavior modification slows down the process; you can only truly learn from mistakes and applied experiences. Let the retards run free and bang into stuff. We all have to go through the process; we've all been retarded. Heck even at the highest forms achievable on this plane, the best of us are barely functional.
But in my personal life, I try to keep the conservatives at a distance. They can lead their fear-filled, mentally challenged, inflexible viewpoints and the associated disasters they call 'lives' without my active participation! It's far too draining to spend time around that bunch of dysfunctional stiffs; "Love Jesus while killing them A-rabs and punishing the poor!" What a travesty of incompatible thinking processes; being in a roomful of conservatives is like experiencing a head-on train collision everybody is pretending not to see.
-FL
Nice post! Very precise and well thought-out. --My last was done while very sleepy and I was later smacking myself for the sloppiness evidenced in it. I thought it likely that you were going to hammer me on a couple of the dafter elements but you stayed in-game, as it were. Much appreciated.
Anyway, you continue to keep this interesting, so I'd like to address a couple of your points if you'll forgive the further indulgence. . .
That study is much like the cold fusion. It is a very interesting result, it is worthy of further testing, but the overwhelming likelihood is that it will not hold up.
The study was actually two studies; the first, done in the Eighties, recorded a strange variance in the decay rates of two radioactive substances. This was not disputed, and indeed has continued to be a source of some confusion among scientists who have had trouble pinning down the exact rates of decay over the years. Decay rates are not supposed to vary at all, being considered one of the most predictable phenomenons known. The second study, done just recently was simply a matter of noting that the variance in decay rates happened to line up in time with where the Sun was in relation to the Earth.
I don't see how you manage to determine that the "overwhelming likelihood is that it will not hold up." To say, 'overwhelming' is rather extreme, and indicates either some knowledge of the study which nobody else appears to have, or an unfair bias. --You outlined your primary biases very effectively, but to say the likelihood is 'overwhelming' suggests a prejudice far beyond your own criteria. Something to think about. --And keep in mind that only the 1% 'lone nut' (like me) are suggesting any connection to astrology at all, and who I should add, are soundly glared at for doing so, also, I would suspect if they had the chance, by the researchers themselves.
I've looked to different degrees into a astrology and a number of comparable areas. Everything that I have seen is that astrology and the like have no rational basis for working, and have no credible evidence of success.
What have you looked at? I've seen a lot of hogwash in my own explorations; indeed, I tend to think that it dominates the spectrum. I can suggest some sources I found credible if you are interested.
Indeed, one of the things I had the opportunity to study at length was stage magic and through these contacts, came across a very detailed manual on how to perform cold reading. In combination with my researches into hypnosis and similar areas, this manual was invaluable in helping to sift out the chaff from the wheat. Because, I must emphasis, you are entirely correct in asserting the various ways self-deception creeps into the field of astrology. It does not however, negate the illogic of the argument, "All cows are animals, therefore all animals are cows," fallacy which I see so often used in this context.
I think we agree that claimed research can be legitimately be identified as unreliable or total junk for concrete reasons. My position is that not all research on this subject is unreliable.
The validity of our opposing positions can only be determined through a review of a long list of studies, which I am afraid I am not predisposed to doing.
My ancillary position is simply that these studies, while fascinating, are not necessary for a personal assessment if that assessment is undertaken sensibly. I do not need to reference studies on water to know that it is wet. I just need to jump in.
Except there are millions of turtle-fans in the backyard talking about this turtle, and thousands of researchers have scoured the backyard asking everyone where's the turtle, and they go with video cameras to document their exploration. Not only can't they get any video of the turtle, they cant find any turtle droppings or turtle tracks or anything else.
Well, this it is true that there are plenty of 'turtle' fans, but it is not true that they have not found any tu
You repeated this theme several times, and I don't think it fair. You know and directly mentioned that I am fully open to science exploring and testing it.
Just responding to the repeated series of examples you have offered. I'll stop now, as you seem to have as well. I think we both understand one another's core arguments.
The only thing I will add is this. . . It still sounds to me as though you are waiting for somebody else to tell you what to think on this subject, when it is very easy to test it for yourself. It's not hard to do, and no scientist worth his or her salt would attempt to write off a phenomenon without even looking at it first. This is the thing I find most frustrating with people who are so very opposed to astrology; they've never even bothered to look for themselves, and quote endless reasons for why this refusal is valid. It's like a kid crying out, "I saw a turtle in the backyard! Come see!" And the adults in the room shaking their heads saying, "No, I will not come see. You have to prove that you saw a turtle, which you cannot do, and so I refuse to believe you." "But you can just come and see for yourself." "Oh, silly child. When you grow up, you will understand."
Many hundreds of astrologers have been tested and when given personality profiles they consistently fail to pair them with birth charts any better than random chance. Studies have been done on thousands of people born within minutes of each other and tracked for decades, and they don't show any more correlation with each other than the general public. It only takes a few moments on Google to find this sort of info.
Three things; 1. There have also been studies which DO show correlation. I didn't find the results of those ones compelling either, as I've yet to see any study which was designed in a manner which I thought was satisfactory. 2. I explained several of my reasons for acknowledging why the scientific process held inherent weaknesses which contribute to poor study design, and those objections still stand. You have not mentioned if or why you disagree, so I am wondering if you have simply ignored those points? That in itself would be interesting. 3. I have found that the subjectivity of astrology makes it almost impossible for an astrologer to work backwards, as it were. Humans are far too complex to be able to observe their behavior and then guess which of the couple million or so combinations of stellar influences happen to be affecting them. It's arrogance and self-delusion on the part of the astrologer, and any study which refutes astrology based on arrogant astrologers performing side-show cold-reading nonsense can only come to a negative conclusion. Such science, while valid enough, doesn't prove anything about the phenomenon itself except that it cannot be measured in this manner.
So that's all. There's not really anything further to add except that I think your reasons for rejecting astrology are incomplete and unsound, and that you are not working with a full enough set of experiences to be able to validate your rejection. Further you seem to be unaware of or are ignoring some rather compelling examples of scientifically observed systems which do suggest that solar bodies have unexpected effects on small systems, (that decay rate study being an example which I mentioned now twice but which you seem to be ignoring for some reason.)
By contrast, you seem to think it expedient to NOT collect any direct experience to form your conclusions because, I gather, you don't trust in your senses or personal ability to detect real pattern from false pattern. And this is the crux of the matter. . .
I believe that even acknowledging the inherent ability for humans to be tricked, that with enough awareness and knowledge, it is not just possible, but expedient for humans to collect information with their senses and use their ability to sort through the resulting patterns they see in the world. Humans have the potential to be smarter and more capable than you give us credit.
I am not afraid of myself.
-FL
I have the impression that INT's are generally pretty disinclined to astrology and the like, so I'm wondering if you selected that particular combo because that is what you tested as?
Nah. Just randomly grabbed four letters from the available eight after I wikied the thing to refresh my memory.
Kinda amusing that I got you all fired up for it. My thoughts the whole time writing it were "Astrology is pure superstition, and here's why".
Oh, sure, I recognize that, but I also recognize a person with both social skills and a fully functioning brain. Have you tried having a conversation with some of the posters around here? Even if you are inclined to disagree with me on every count, you at least know how to have fun pulling ideas apart while remaining positive and polite. A lot of people have yet to learn how to separate the subject from the ego.
I am majorly about "Science is right and the rest is bunkum", and so big on the science view that I am philosophically dedicated to the number #1 rule of science that everything is open to testing and revision based on the evidence.
I'm the same way, with the exception that I recognize that science is young and that just because it hasn't found a way to explain certain phenomenon doesn't mean that those phenomenon don't exist. And astrology is one of several intriguing subjects as it drifts into an area of awareness which demands that the observer take responsibility for all observations and not rely on others to validate their experiences. This presents a real stumbling block for scientists.
--Astrology is not as far into that zone as say, those who report having dreams. (You cannot prove to have had a dream. The best we can do is observe activities within the brain, but the experiences themselves belong only to the observer. Luckily, everybody dreams, and so people are not ridiculed for claiming to have had the experiences they claim.) There are many powerful experiences of this nature which rely so heavily upon the actual process of cognition that they are not easily or sometimes even possible to validate through the material application of scientific instruments. In such areas, there literally is a great deal of truth to, "I'll see it when I believe it." And the converse is also true, "I won't see it unless I believe it." People who work within the sciences, (I've grown up with many of them), tend to give away their power to others. --The power to have self-confidence, that is. They cannot feel secure unless an authority figure of some kind nods to them and says, "Yes, you are right."
But astrology is really interesting in this manner; it is a bridge of sorts, because it exists in a half-way zone; it can be measured and recorded, and it has rules which work, but there is a leap required. --Not a leap of faith, because it does have the ability to smack you on the nose. It's more a leap of courage. All you have to do is crack a book and look at the patterns. Many in the science community simply refuse to do this. Refuse! A whole life lived without ever even looking. Part of the problem is that it IS a bridge; if astrology works, then what else does that imply? Scientifically-minded people, I think, are the most liable to see all the implications and will be unable to resist pulling at the cloth; regular folks tend to be more docile and will not see the threads or that the whole of the safe and accepted reality falls apart when you pull those threads.
Anyway. . , I also recognize that science and people in general are prone to self-deception in order to maintain a perception of reality which stays within a set of often unspoken social rules. In the same way most believe that, "I'm not affected by advertising," people in the scientific realm believe that they are not affected by groupthink. But there are many examples of self-deception happening within the halls of academia, and they are indeed very similar in character to the kinds of flaws often pointed out in people who are foo
Gates is now in that portion of his career where he wants to leave a legacy of having not lived an evil, selfish life. Very rich people have done this before. In retirement, they realize the world thinks they're dicks, and without work to fill their attention and worlds to conquer, it's time for a little mid-life narcissism.
This isn't about selling Windows. It's about white-washing the crust of evil so that he can feel good about himself in the world's eyes, and Bill the conqueror is perfectly willing to blow millions of dollars to make sure we all love him. He's even gotten involved with one of the most influential charitable organizations in the world, (though in classic Bill style, it's one which divides people. Planned Parenthood, beneath it's brochure values is based on the idea that the human population needs executive control to make sure only the right people have babies. Harsh, I know, but check out the history. There's been a lot of scrubbing, but it's foundation is rather creepy.)
How about this, Bill: Give me ten million dollars and I'll tell everybody you're a great guy.
Brr. Wow. I just went there in my head for a second. Personal insight; I just learned that I actually wouldn't shill for Bill.
-FL
I read stuff like your post and I get all pumped up about putting together a big study. It would definitely have to be carefully designed and double blinded because I obviously have my biases well in place after all my informal tinkering.
I've read about a few studies, and there was in fact one involving birth date twins; where the researchers went through birth records looking for people who were born at exactly the same time all over the country and then contacted the people in an effort to measure patterns. I'm not sure what their measurement criteria were, (I wasn't able to find the actual study), but the overall results came back with a statistical down the middle which confirmed nothing but the expected numerical average. Again, the problem comes with the matter being so subjective in nature. How do you reliably test for qualities of personality? I was thinking of perhaps using one of those detailed personality tests which advertising companies used to powerful effect in the sixties while trying to work out how to better market their goods; the ones which end up with a reliable map. (You know the ones which end up with people saying, "Yeah, I took the Myers Briggs test, and I'm an I N T P.") --Though, I'm not convinced that would do the trick.
One of the things I noticed when exploring the Asian system was that you could see broad behavior profiles for classes in schools; since everybody in a given year would predominantly be one type of animal. Having gone through a year of 'Dogs', I could see all manner of very different people all around me, individuals who seemed to exemplify all manner of different personalities. But when I pulled back the lens, so to speak, I did notice that taking the whole journey through Jr. High for three years did take on an overall quality which was notably different from a year filled with Rats or Monkeys or what have you. A friend of mine went through a year of Monkeys, and the number of deaths, disasters and general calamity among the students due to over-zealous, er. . , 'monkeying' around was ridiculously high and actually quite creative, whereas the Dog year was on the whole quite mellow with lots of camaraderie. In traveling through life these sorts of 'positives' add up rather quickly, but of course, from a clinical perspective, the results are basically useless.
The test you suggest where you give out personality descriptions and ask people to pick the one which best suits them sounds promising. With a good design and a large enough sample, I think I might feel confident in the results. It would be a huge challenge to design it correctly, though. Just getting people to take the test at all would be a filter of its own sort; coming up with a truly random sample of people willing and capable of reading through sixty or more pages of detailed descriptions. I wouldn't feel confident with just the 12 basic signs in the Asian calendar; The differences between a "Wood Monkey" and a "Metal Monkey" are often stark, and there are five different elements. For even finer calibration, I'd be happiest combining it with the 12 Western signs, which also play a role. --Because it is very true, there are more than 12 different people out there.
When I do the math, multiplying the various respected aspects astrologers look at when working with a person's profile, the number of possible combinations balloons geometrically.
Just to be a completest, I'll note the following. . . In Western astrology, the big personality indexes include 12 Sun signs, 12 Rising signs, and 12 Moon signs, all of which play a significant role in how a person is affected. Then for the Asian system, there are 12 year signs, 12 hour signs and 5 elements. The basic total without taking any of the lesser influences into account is (12 to the power of 5) x 5. --Whether you are Male or Female bends the results again, so the whole number needs to be doubled up. The Asians also consider which season you were born in to be important, but I think there may be some over-lap with
"When the student is ready, the application form will appear"?
-FL