My personal email address is 5@.. and I chose it because I'd never change it, because it *doesn't mean anything.* I'm not five years old, my birthday lacks a five in it anywhere, it's not in my driver's license number, my name isn't five letters.. It doesn't mean anything, and that's why it works.
Dude, everything means something. "5@" is loaded with information.
1. Who the heck gets an email like that? Either a very early adopter, a supporter of a very small ISP or somebody with access to a unique webhost. If you're using one of the giant internet providers, you are tech-savvy enough to know how to tinker with email identifications. Many companies and institutions which have their own email host require employees to conform to email naming standards, so either you didn't acquire that email name through work, you're a guy who buys his own web hosting or works high enough up some sort of chain to be able to do goofy stuff without comment from superiors. The common factors one or both of the following deductions: You're a guy who knows his way around a computer thank-you-very-much or you hold an important (but not too-important, or you wouldn't have such a weird email address) position of some kind. That takes care of the broad guess information. The personality reading is much tighter.
2. You're a guy who doesn't want to advertise silly nonsense in an email name. This doesn't mean you can't be an anime geek, but it does mean you're aware enough to know that such an email name is kind of silly, and you don't want to come across that way. Whatever the case, a name which gives away nothing is consciously chosen for that reason. This suggests you are a cautious person with some pretty good brains, which tells me a lot about how you can be expected to handle yourself in any number of scenarios. Any confidence you have in social situations probably comes from a studied investment of will power rather than a naturally bubbly charisma. This gives me the general locations of a ton of probable fear, anger and happy buttons I could poke around for if I wanted to manipulate you. --Don't worry. I don't do that!:)
3. It's possible that you are also one of those guys who has a no-nonsense somewhat self-important and conservative (though not necessarily in the political sense) attitude who spends a fair bit of energy devoted to sighing heavily at people who ARE silly and thoughtless.
One might be tempted to ask, "Why 5 and not some other number?", but that's too squishy an area to really tread in. Though one might note that had you picked a "1" it would suggest some outward self-importance which you either couldn't embrace or chose not to for some reason. 3 and 7 are 'magic/biblical' numbers, whereas 5 suggests balance and digital thinking. But like I said, that whole area is a bit too squishy for my liking.
In any case, that's all just from a number "5". I know what you're not, and that gives me a ton of profile to work with. I could be wrong about all of it, of course, but those patterns do jump to mind first.
(Yes, many readers will call me crazy for that. Choose your roommates carefully guys.)
Whoa. Crazy? No, 'crazy' would have been the house you'd have if you invited her in. Been there, and not because the landlord listened to my suggestions. I've lived with some very interesting people from all across the social spectrum, and it IS fun and enlightening, but the stress level eventually forces a dramatic shift of some kind. I wouldn't go back and change a thing with my experiences, but they were by no means a walk in the park. I have a lot of very fond memories from my room-mate years, but it was hell on earth at times. There is a time and a place for both adventures and for quiet.
So really, REALLY, it is no longer a threat to you.
With its political message about evil empires and its spiritual messages about personal power. Really. Nobody is listening to that anymore. You've muddied the waters hopelessly. You've achieved your objective.
So please, please. Retract your mind-control claws from poor George's brain.
Those of you who are concerned about contaminating the environment with lead, remember that the lead was in the environment to begin with. We have environmentalists screaming at miners not to take lead out of the ground, then they turn right around and scream at us when we try to put it back in somewhere else.
Cute. The problem people have is when toxic levels of lead accumulate in people's bodies directly due to irresponsible industrial practices and poorly managed municipal waste programs. But you knew that. Heck, in my town, we have an insane 'green' program whereby farmers are subsidized if they 'fertilize' their crops with industrial and municipal sludge from water treatment facilities. It hasn't been treated. It's raw. The only thing removed is the water. And guess what? We now have high levels of heavy metals and other random chemicals in our produce, fish and livestock. How's that for brilliant?
When people smarten up, then I might accept over-simplified "It came from the ground" comments. Until then, I'll be keeping a close eye on the brain-damaged clowns who run industry and government. --I don't want to eat lead just because the people in charge of my food and water supply apparently already have.
At first glance, I thought HSR had suffered from the ravages of time and a fickle public, but from the comments, it seems that there are some people who manged to avoid the mega-internet sensation which ripped through my town three years back.
A Strongbad point & click adventure from the Sam & Max guys?
Aside from the fact that content driven story adventures are today's Pong in the game world, it should be pretty impressive. I love their voice acting and comic timing, even if the HSR humor is cynical and mean-spirited.
I'd check it out if I didn't have to actually play it. Or own a Wii. I miss the days when I could kick back as my friends labored their way through silly games while I watched. I pretty much cannot stand the act of actually working through nearly any kind of video game myself, but for some reason, I really enjoy seeing my friends play them. --That way I don't have to muck around with annoying control pads or remember button combinations and I don't have to stress out over endless, repetitive hand-eye coordination challenges, whereas I DO get to see a story (of sorts) unfold before me and share in the camaraderie of cheering on friends as they confront challenges. It was generally far more fun than regular TV programming because I got to see people I cared about achieving their goals, (even if they were meaningless digital goals). --Then I grew up and no longer have time to blow on basement adventures and junk food.
Still, good for the Strongbad creators. They've worked long and hard and they have lots of talent. I hope this project does well for them! -FL
WWIII is starting over in Georgia. You know, with the Black and the Caspian Seas on either side. --You know; where the OTHER big oil treasure trove happens to be.
Oh, and there just happens to be the largest buildup of U.S. and European naval might ever in the area. Just in case anybody was interested.
But do go on and pay attention to the distracting lights. Even if some of them happen to be fake.
It is rather presumptuous to declare with such broad strokes what an entire nation wants, particularly when there are certainly people who strongly disagree and are in a position to do so with moral authority. Such a declaration also neatly alleviates one from the reality that the option of ignoring the trend of mass industrialization has been made all but impossible. Deliberate population intimidation and destruction through corporate warfare is commonplace in such nations. --It's a question of get with the game or be strong-armed and clear-cut out of existence, (not to mention, forced into labor). The point I was making was that despising a people for not naturally being able to adopt the values of a foreign culture is both insular and arrogant. This is further so when there is a strong element in the developed nations to prevent strong business and government from developing which might create conditions whereby slave labor is no longer feasible.
When you drive down any of the main roads every 500m you have somebody with a small stand selling pineapples. That is as far as the local entrepreneurial spirit extends: street vendors. They sell exactly the same thing and nobody gets the idea of joining up with other vendors, expanding and centralizing etc.. in short running a business.
I was talking with a fellow I met while traveling. He grew up in Africa. He described to me a daily routine which worked like this. . .
You want to eat? Go and chop down some fruit from a nearby tree. There's lots about. Or you do some fishing and pull breakfast out of the river. If you want red meat, then once or twice a month, your town will slaughter a large animal and roast it over a huge bonfire. It's easy to stay alive, and it leaves lots of time for you to explore yourself.
If you want to be alone, you can go off into the jungle and spend a few days out there. If you get lonely, you come back to town, or maybe visit another town. Life is very different in Africa; you don't need to work in large groups to survive and this shapes how culture evolves.
He didn't complain about the West at all; he just described what life was like before the oil rigs came and Western ideals destroyed his culture.
What I am saying is that the culture of the high-tech centralized business ethic you understand and respect is both alien and unnecessary in some of these tropical countries. What makes it necessary to adopt them today in such regions is that Western and European cultures have adopted the practice of endless expansionism and will essentially enslave you if you don't make at least some effort to play the same game and hold your own against the tide of commercial enterprise. These are cultures where money wasn't a necessary invention. --So when you drive down the streets seeing people vending pineapples and you feel the urge to judge them and even perhaps hate them, it is a good idea to recognize the larger patterns at work in the world. If you grew up in the jungle where you were not programmed into an efficient work-bot, then how naturally would you be inclined to adopt the insane-seeming business practices (because they are not necessary at all for a happy life) of the West?
They provide fodder so that the self-righteous Slashdotter know-it-all can feel superior.
I've met guys like this before, and a good portion of them are just being contrary because they know it bugs people.
Another good portion of them are suffering from some kind of obvious emotional/mental disorder which makes them difficult to be around. So yes, let's all laugh at the distressed people and jump up and down for the trolls.
The only real problem with these sorts of people is that they discredit any ideas which happen to have substance but which tend to get lumped in with and sullied by flat earth thinking.
But the tinfoil hat is protecting you just fine, right?
No. Thinking protects me. A nice side benefit is that it also means I get to come up with my own jokes and far more useful insights than, well. . .
The other brand of snatched bodies aren't the ones who sing the same hymns over and over in the hopes that the scary ideas will go away. No. The other brand of snatched body is the sort which repeats the same daft joke over and over in the hopes that the scary ideas will go away. It's the same general affliction.
Communism? I guess you could say it's not a con but it's killed more people in the last 100 years than christianity in 2000.
Hm. Political systems. --And if we're going to point at Communism, we mustn't forget to note that Westernism is also a huge killer, (though I would argue that Westernism derives much of its blood-lust through Christianity; I would say that a lot of what is going on in the Middle East right now, for instance, would not have come about without the bible first being in existence.). But yeah, believing in the lies of one's leadership is very much succumbing to con artists, though I would say that there is one big difference between political ideologies and religion. Religion today is far more optional than whether or not you pay tax. At least in the West. In the Middle East, it seems to be rather more pushy. And if the hard-core religious right gets their way, then a similar brand of pushiness would be replicated here.
As long as we're applying reason to the Bible, why not acknowledge it as nothing more than a book of bronze age mythology and treat it as such?
Because a bronze age book of mythology can be happily ignored (unless you're a history buff), whereas this book is more than just a collection of crusty stories. It's the seed of a global manipulation which has resulted in more dead/dying/suffering people than any other con I can think of off the top of my head. As much as I frown at myself for doing so, I tend to conclude, "If you decide to stop thinking, then you get to live and die miserably." It's painful to watch, but people get what they deserve. You just need to give them lots of self-destruct room so they don't drag you down with them.
I live in a city with more churches per capita than anywhere else I've seen. You literally cannot walk a hundred meters without passing a cult-house. The creepy singing can be heard on Sundays rising all across the city, and when I acknowledge it, it scares me to the core because you just know how little it would take for these so-called peace-loving people to turn on a dime and become torch-wielding killers at the whim of their controllers. I love Slashdot for keeping me sane on days like that, when I am struck cold by the realization that most of the people around me I consider friendly neighbors might as well be from that Body Snatchers movie.
You should keep an eye on the three credit reporting agencies. Verizon may also sell your debt to third parties who might continue to come after you.
When it comes to unfair debt collection, the collection agency is in dodgy water. It seems to me that collection agents are going to be rather afraid on some level of a big possible whammy. --That is, they are just a thin legal line away from being an extortion racket. --A company falsely decides that you owe money, sends it into the collection system, and then professional collectors are allowed to harass you until you pony up. On some level, these guys know the accusations which can be leveled at them, and while they may never have heard them, they probably spend a portion of their time having one-sided arguments in the car or shower with invisible accusers. Gotta love those self-imposed fears; they always take on the meanest possible face when in the imagination. So that stuff is always gnawing on at least some employees at the collection office.
It's like dealing with government employees during a tax audit, (been there). I noticed in the couple of civil servants I dealt with during the process that they were clearly harboring a gnawing guilt, that they were permanently stressed over the fact that at any moment the subject might leap up and scold them for being over-paid system leaches. I suspect they spend a good deal of internal energy dealing with this guilt or trying to shore up rational defenses against the idea. I remember the agents I was dealing with offering up excuses and defenses for things I'd never said or even implied, and one lady who reacted very strongly when she was questioning my write-off of a bicycle, (which she at first Ah-Hahed! as though it were evidence of my trying to get away with something). When I explained that I didn't drive a car and that a bicycle was my primary means of transport partly because that's all I could afford, she physically recoiled and started blustering apologies and rationalizations not just for her assumption, but for her own use of a car. It was as though I had laid out a big speech about how she was using tax-payer dollars on a selfish means of transport when she could easily take the bus to work, a job where she shook down people who worked harder than her at more worthwhile tasks and why was she being such a coward in life rather than go out there into the world and get a real job like everybody else? --All of that unspoken accusation was suddenly on the table, and it had all come from her! Her baggage. Cool. --Without even trying or ever really pushing the advantage, I discovered all kinds of buttons you could press in these people to torment them if I had chosen to do so. And that was just during a routine audit.
So unless you're dealing with a sociopath, then the same general rules will apply to collection agents; a low level fear that what they are doing is questionable or that it might in fact be illegal if the paperwork isn't clean; those fears are automatically going to reside in their minds, or at least their bosses' minds. Just bringing a little pressure to bear, not even directly, but simply through asking questions which are normal enough on the surface, but which will cause the secondary cascade of unspoken thoughts to lead to thoughts tied to fear buttons, (like that thing with the bicycle), will make their day that much more difficult and your case that much less appealing. And unlike with government employees, these guys aren't guaranteed to have a job the next month if they don't bring home lots of bacon for the company, so anything which makes your case file seem like one to shuffle to the bottom of the heap is good.
But mainly the big thing is the amount they hope to collect from you. It has to be at least equal the cost of employing the agent during the time required to process your case. The longer you drag it out, the less and less you are worth. If you kick up a fuss and insist that the company which sold them your 'debt' was n
You just saved me ten minutes of my life pointing out the obvious to yet another corporate apologist. (And I'm not the OP). --And where do they get those guys, anyway? At what point does a person start despising humanity so much that they figure the populace deserves punishment simply for existing?
Google: Multi-billion dollar world-wide infrastructure where they like to build their data centers near power generation stations because they use so much electricity, own thousands of miles of 'dark fiber' and even after years of this build-up, STILL give generally reliable search results and with a few exceptions, I more or less buy their, "do-no-evil" tag line. All this as a result of two guys who thought, "Hey, what if somebody made an uncluttered search engine with unobtrusive advertising that was REALLY, ACTUALLY user-friendly and didn't suck to use?"
Versus. . .
Me too, and we're so 'Cuil' because our imagination-lacking, safe-road and thus lame investors and marketing people figured we needed that MTV-zing to be hip with the kids, y'know?
Get real. What are they bringing to the table which is new? If nothing, then they are just lame opportunists who probably don't know what the heck they are doing because if they did, they're recognize that they're already in stupid-land. UNLESS, and this is my cynical side, there are some smart people involved who are actually just out to fleece investors with an "Honest, see, we're Really Trying" make-work company which everybody with a brain knows isn't actually doing anything but they didn't want to get real jobs.
I can think of a dozen truly useful things one could do with 25 million dollars, but which will not happen because of everything wrong with the world which makes the above scenario a common reality.
The sad thing is that this stupid start-up is getting press. I guess the same is true of internet start-ups as was true of Joseph Goebbels; say it loud and often enough and it becomes true. The bigger the lie, and all that. --Until it comes crashing to the ground when reality kicks in, of course. (Which also tends to happen with governments built on lies).
But on the off-chance that I'm being unfairly cynical, I will put in this one proviso; MAYBE, just MAYBE there are some people at the top of 'Cuil' whose personal passion actually, honestly, really is to build a better search engine and improve the world, in which case, Good For Them!
Whoa. I didn't even make it half-way through that sentence with a straight face. And I tried, too! Oh, well nevermind.
"I'm clearly not engineer enough to be reading this for fun."
Interesting ideas, and technically bonded together very, very tightly. -Like on the atomic level. But golly! After reading about one third through, I found the stream of story simply too chock-full of nuts and fiber, (with too few raisins); thick enough to walk on. So I ended up skipping along the surface to get to the punch line. Short stories are hard to write, and this proves it.
1300+ comments and 99.9% of them revealing and encouraging. We've collectively put a MOUNTAIN of thought into personal health. Our bodies get a lot of focus. --The medium is the message, eh? Says a ton about our society.
You can pull a Veidt, (Watchmen) and just skim over this vast field of posts and within a few minutes know pretty much every solution there is when it comes to balancing a sit-all-the-time job with trying to keep the body healthy.
I might as well pitch in with my own little story, since the motivation to share IS almost overwhelming. (People put so much thought into this and are so rarely asked what their solutions are).
1. An Interesting Observation Everybody has a different body, but in the geek world, there's a big generalization one can make; we're either tall, skinny guys, or we're tubs. Don't really know why that is, but that genetic skew seems to be a fact. I'm a tall skinny guy, perhaps this post will be useful for two-thirds of anybody skimming over this.
2. Quality and Quantity. By Default. Being just this side of some sort of condition other people get drugged for but which I've been lucky enough to be able to live around, I tend to get so into whatever it is I'm working on that I forget to eat. Hunger becomes just this annoying thing which I'll deal with after I tinker with this one line I'm working on for just ten more minutes. . . Eventually the stomach stops complaining. So long as you don't spend a lot of time in this state, (you'll make yourself sick if you do. I know.), and when you do eat, go out of your way to eat the good stuff, so that when you do eat the junk it doesn't tend to cause a problem. --As for the Good Stuff, nutrition-wise, that whole "Listen to your body" thing really, really works, I find. If people quiet down long enough to hear the internal cues, and if they bind that with some basic nutritional research, then 95% of the grocery store becomes off-limits, as do fast-food joints and the like. I live in a city with a LOT of fat people who are fat as a direct result of their diet and because they are simply not paying attention. The body doesn't want to feel bad, and so if you only eat that which makes your body feel better after having eaten it, then you're a long way to where most people want to be.
3. Exercise. I happen to own a bike instead of a car, and so when I need to get anywhere, I'm stressing the body in a good way by necessity. In the Winter, I'm on foot. Beyond that, when I'm feeling a little too thin upper body-wise, I might do some push-ups or exercises of some sort, but that's only for aesthetic reasons which I soon give up on. Girls seem to find me attractive enough, so I figure as long as I'm happy and healthy enough to experience life however I need to, then why waste time?
Okay. That's my two-cents. Thanks to everybody for sharing! These kinds of questions remind me of the Big Common Connection. Despite my sometimes-grumbling, I really do think you're all pretty awesome!
I ever enjoyed were the early ones when there were no cheats available. Figuring out the very first puzzle in The Hitchhiker's Guide text adventure was really cool. A friend and I were fighting with it for hours. --Or rather, we were stumped by it and then we discussed other things, and goofed around like teenage boys, and then when we went back to it, my friend suddenly realized, "Hold on. . . One of the five senses is missing. .." And he keyed in "Smell" or whatever it was, and the game opened up. That was awesome! But it took time and a willingness to let problems stew for days and weeks on end. But life was slower in the Eighties.
Later on, the best puzzle game I played was Full Throttle. The story and voice acting made the puzzles worth solving. But for the most part, puzzles were just highly annoying things which weren't fun so much as they were annoying. Back when I still played video games, I remember being deeply frustrated with Lucas Arts Star Wars games because they kept making me stop and figure out stupid on-off switch sequences when all I wanted to do was blast storm troopers.
I have spent some time with those tower-defense games, and they are sort of like dynamic puzzles in and of themselves. I suppose all games are like that in the end; learning how to win is a matter of working out successful pathways through computer logic. Such is life, really, except in computer games, you are limited in that you are only allowed to solve problems in the way envisioned by the game writers. That was always the most ridiculous thing about video games. Everybody has experienced that one, I am sure. "But there's a graphic of a wrench right there on the work bench! Why can't I pick it up? Why do I need to find a stupid coat hanger to fish the key out of the drain pipe when I could just disassemble the plumbing? Who wrote this silly program, anyway???"
Real life is a better puzzle game than any computer could offer. The difference is that the rewards come less quickly and you have to actually sweat and take real risks. But people have proven that they are much more willing to put up with digital mediocrity in order to have fast, safe albeit empty rewards rather than live and win for real.
How many real experience points did you earn today?
I remember my father bringing home one of the early consumer hand-held calculators. It took a stack of triple A cells and it came with a wall socket adapter. It cost a couple hundred dollars. The whole family was very impressed and my father looked like a kid with a shiny new wagon. Heck, he can't have been more than twenty-something at the time. Go Dad!
The public went bananas for small calculators. They were the 'It' machine of the day. The digital watch or the Walkman. Everybody had to have one, and the big electronics companies all went crazy, because they thought they were going to make a mint. They were wrong. Tons of competition drove prices down and innovations up, (and according to the three minutes of internet research I just did) it was tough to make a lot of profit on calculators. Today, as we all know, hand-held calculators are basically given away for free. The sort of thing you dig through the house junk drawer when you lose the one you normally use. As it should be.
I don't know how the wrist-watch craze went, and even though Sony did gangbusters with their Walkman, you can get a portable music player for, (ahem) a song these days. Now its time for the portable computer to go through this process. --The difference now is that when all those other devices came along, I responded with, "Yeah. That's a good idea! I wonder why I didn't care at all before now?" (Of course, it all had to do with my age and where I was in life at the time.) Today it's different. I've been wanting a light, small, affordable portable computer for years. I even have a used one from the late 90's that I garnered from eBay and which I use every other day. --I was using it only half an hour ago to write some stuff while away from the desktop PC. That thing was well over a thousand dollars new, and it's an under-powered, hinge-cracked piece of gosa on its last legs. I've literally used it to death, and I'll be needing to replace it shortly.
The only question I have is this. . . Will I replace it with another old used machine from ten years ago or with one of these new ones? It's a real question. The new ones are flashy and slick and powerful, but they are missing the one feature I truly adore in my old device. "Instant On". Time will tell.
In another year, (assuming we aren't all dazed, starving and licking our radioactive wounds), we'll see prices dropping from all the competition. The pattern is the same; all the antenna of the manufacturers prick up when somebody demonstrates a successful new device, and copy cat machines go head to head in a market place hungry for, "Faster! Cheaper! Better!" Then the next thing you know, they're basically free, doing everything they ever promised, becoming a piece of our daily reality we take for granted.
I do not understand this obsession with cheap crap on Slashdot recently... This $130 "laptop" is a fine example. Seriously, I'm lost... why would anyone consider buying such thing?
This question has been asked before and I'm sure it will be asked again. But you know the answers, as do the millions of people who are excited about these devices. Anybody with a scrap of imagination can work it out; you're just asking because you feel like making a fuss over something which you have decided doesn't fit with who you are.
The name, the business plan, everything screams, "Marketing Think Tank".
The difference between you manipulative scum and something which isn't you, is that you don't know what Passion and Honesty are. They don't come in a bottle, and they cannot be engineered in a board room. You crocodiles are the kinds of people who think, "Ah, I understand that if you turn the corners of your mouth up, then people are more likely to let you exploit them."
The sad, sick, depressing and altogether pathetic part is that often you vile pieces of worm dung are successful. Luckily, in this case, my spider sense is telling me that you are about to amount to a big fat nothing. You're probably just in this to scam investors and you have no real interest in actually even making a successful search engine; that's just part of the horse & pony show. All you have to do is demonstrate due diligence, and pocket the check. At least the public isn't the piece of cake which happens to be in your sights this time around. Fuck you and enjoy your worm dung lives. --But you'd better be quick; your brethren in banking and industry have seen to it that all your money will be worth less than toilet paper by the middle of next year. (Because you see, toilet paper is more comfortable and absorbent to wipe with.)
My hometown still has a law on the books that cars aren't allowed to scare the horses travelling down Main Street. Anyone want to get up in arms about that one while we're at it?
If I were living in your town, I certainly might complain if some heavily lobbied government group suddenly started forcing people to buy licenses based on that law.
The thing is. . . Once one accepts the possibility of aliens, then all of those other subjects you mentioned gain validity. They're all connected. Essentially they all find their foundation on the notion that there are some states of being which do not revolve exclusively around the idea of material existence. This idea is easily dismissed, (it is certainly discouraged by academia), and the field has been laden with so many mountains of horrid nonsense that any sane person is easily put off.
However, once one decides to actually study the field honestly and consistently, it is rather quickly learned that there IS something to the idea. Quite a lot, actually.
But many never, never look, preferring to rest their belief structures upon ideas safe from the terrible danger of being laughed at. Awareness doesn't come cheap; it never has, but I prefer to base my beliefs not just on what I am told it is acceptable to think about. I'd rather look and think for myself. Basically, the moment I sense that I might be socially punished for exploring an idea, it revs me up. It certainly doesn't mean that everything I look into is valid. Indeed, much of it is twisted half-truth garbage created by egos and wishful thinking, but I wouldn't know that without looking. And I also wouldn't know that some of it, some very powerful bits of it, are entirely real. --And I'll be damned if I'm going to be bullied by intellectual cowards into believing only that which I am told is okay to believe; that which is officially sanctioned. I find that thought offensive in the extreme, and I cannot understand why more people don't bristle at the idea. Being socially manipulated by the fear of ridicule is for the birds.
The fascinating thing I've found is that such knowledge comes with its own automatic safeguards. When it comes to the non-physical, you absolutely HAVE to decide for yourself not to be scared and not to be closed. In the arena of the mind, scientific reductionism doesn't work the same way it does in the material realm; proof is very difficult to force upon those who choose to close their perceptions to it, and further, one of the things one eventually learns is that forcing people to go against their choices is a fundamental violation which carries penalties. The full spectrum of reality is only for the courageous.
Slashdot Mirror
8 and 5 year-olds were also into Ninja Turtles and Pokemon.
In the 70's and 80's Star Wars was successful in appealing to both kids and adults. Something got lost along the way.
-FL
My personal email address is 5@.. and I chose it because I'd never change it, because it *doesn't mean anything.* I'm not five years old, my birthday lacks a five in it anywhere, it's not in my driver's license number, my name isn't five letters.. It doesn't mean anything, and that's why it works.
Dude, everything means something. "5@" is loaded with information.
1. Who the heck gets an email like that? Either a very early adopter, a supporter of a very small ISP or somebody with access to a unique webhost. If you're using one of the giant internet providers, you are tech-savvy enough to know how to tinker with email identifications. Many companies and institutions which have their own email host require employees to conform to email naming standards, so either you didn't acquire that email name through work, you're a guy who buys his own web hosting or works high enough up some sort of chain to be able to do goofy stuff without comment from superiors. The common factors one or both of the following deductions: You're a guy who knows his way around a computer thank-you-very-much or you hold an important (but not too-important, or you wouldn't have such a weird email address) position of some kind. That takes care of the broad guess information. The personality reading is much tighter.
2. You're a guy who doesn't want to advertise silly nonsense in an email name. This doesn't mean you can't be an anime geek, but it does mean you're aware enough to know that such an email name is kind of silly, and you don't want to come across that way. Whatever the case, a name which gives away nothing is consciously chosen for that reason. This suggests you are a cautious person with some pretty good brains, which tells me a lot about how you can be expected to handle yourself in any number of scenarios. Any confidence you have in social situations probably comes from a studied investment of will power rather than a naturally bubbly charisma. This gives me the general locations of a ton of probable fear, anger and happy buttons I could poke around for if I wanted to manipulate you. --Don't worry. I don't do that! :)
3. It's possible that you are also one of those guys who has a no-nonsense somewhat self-important and conservative (though not necessarily in the political sense) attitude who spends a fair bit of energy devoted to sighing heavily at people who ARE silly and thoughtless.
One might be tempted to ask, "Why 5 and not some other number?", but that's too squishy an area to really tread in. Though one might note that had you picked a "1" it would suggest some outward self-importance which you either couldn't embrace or chose not to for some reason. 3 and 7 are 'magic/biblical' numbers, whereas 5 suggests balance and digital thinking. But like I said, that whole area is a bit too squishy for my liking.
In any case, that's all just from a number "5". I know what you're not, and that gives me a ton of profile to work with. I could be wrong about all of it, of course, but those patterns do jump to mind first.
-FL
(Yes, many readers will call me crazy for that. Choose your roommates carefully guys.)
Whoa. Crazy? No, 'crazy' would have been the house you'd have if you invited her in. Been there, and not because the landlord listened to my suggestions. I've lived with some very interesting people from all across the social spectrum, and it IS fun and enlightening, but the stress level eventually forces a dramatic shift of some kind. I wouldn't go back and change a thing with my experiences, but they were by no means a walk in the park. I have a lot of very fond memories from my room-mate years, but it was hell on earth at times. There is a time and a place for both adventures and for quiet.
-FL
You jive with British fantasy/humor authors and their world views more than the average Slashdotter. Probably dig Doctor Who on a soul-level.
That is, if you're not a black rapper replicating street slang of some kind.
How close was I? Cigars today?
-FL
You've killed it.
Star Wars is dead.
Nobody is watching anymore.
It's message has been buried.
We're even laughing at it now.
So really, REALLY, it is no longer a threat to you.
With its political message about evil empires and its spiritual messages about personal power. Really. Nobody is listening to that anymore. You've muddied the waters hopelessly. You've achieved your objective.
So please, please. Retract your mind-control claws from poor George's brain.
Show some pity.
-FL
Those of you who are concerned about contaminating the environment with lead, remember that the lead was in the environment to begin with. We have environmentalists screaming at miners not to take lead out of the ground, then they turn right around and scream at us when we try to put it back in somewhere else.
Cute. The problem people have is when toxic levels of lead accumulate in people's bodies directly due to irresponsible industrial practices and poorly managed municipal waste programs. But you knew that. Heck, in my town, we have an insane 'green' program whereby farmers are subsidized if they 'fertilize' their crops with industrial and municipal sludge from water treatment facilities. It hasn't been treated. It's raw. The only thing removed is the water. And guess what? We now have high levels of heavy metals and other random chemicals in our produce, fish and livestock. How's that for brilliant?
When people smarten up, then I might accept over-simplified "It came from the ground" comments. Until then, I'll be keeping a close eye on the brain-damaged clowns who run industry and government. --I don't want to eat lead just because the people in charge of my food and water supply apparently already have.
-FL
Wow. A low comment count.
At first glance, I thought HSR had suffered from the ravages of time and a fickle public, but from the comments, it seems that there are some people who manged to avoid the mega-internet sensation which ripped through my town three years back.
A Strongbad point & click adventure from the Sam & Max guys?
Aside from the fact that content driven story adventures are today's Pong in the game world, it should be pretty impressive. I love their voice acting and comic timing, even if the HSR humor is cynical and mean-spirited.
I'd check it out if I didn't have to actually play it. Or own a Wii. I miss the days when I could kick back as my friends labored their way through silly games while I watched. I pretty much cannot stand the act of actually working through nearly any kind of video game myself, but for some reason, I really enjoy seeing my friends play them. --That way I don't have to muck around with annoying control pads or remember button combinations and I don't have to stress out over endless, repetitive hand-eye coordination challenges, whereas I DO get to see a story (of sorts) unfold before me and share in the camaraderie of cheering on friends as they confront challenges. It was generally far more fun than regular TV programming because I got to see people I cared about achieving their goals, (even if they were meaningless digital goals). --Then I grew up and no longer have time to blow on basement adventures and junk food.
Still, good for the Strongbad creators. They've worked long and hard and they have lots of talent. I hope this project does well for them!
-FL
WWIII is starting over in Georgia. You know, with the Black and the Caspian Seas on either side. --You know; where the OTHER big oil treasure trove happens to be.
Oh, and there just happens to be the largest buildup of U.S. and European naval might ever in the area. Just in case anybody was interested.
But do go on and pay attention to the distracting lights. Even if some of them happen to be fake.
-FL
It is rather presumptuous to declare with such broad strokes what an entire nation wants, particularly when there are certainly people who strongly disagree and are in a position to do so with moral authority. Such a declaration also neatly alleviates one from the reality that the option of ignoring the trend of mass industrialization has been made all but impossible. Deliberate population intimidation and destruction through corporate warfare is commonplace in such nations. --It's a question of get with the game or be strong-armed and clear-cut out of existence, (not to mention, forced into labor). The point I was making was that despising a people for not naturally being able to adopt the values of a foreign culture is both insular and arrogant. This is further so when there is a strong element in the developed nations to prevent strong business and government from developing which might create conditions whereby slave labor is no longer feasible.
-FL
When you drive down any of the main roads every 500m you have somebody with a small stand selling pineapples. That is as far as the local entrepreneurial spirit extends: street vendors. They sell exactly the same thing and nobody gets the idea of joining up with other vendors, expanding and centralizing etc.. in short running a business.
I was talking with a fellow I met while traveling. He grew up in Africa. He described to me a daily routine which worked like this. . .
You want to eat? Go and chop down some fruit from a nearby tree. There's lots about. Or you do some fishing and pull breakfast out of the river. If you want red meat, then once or twice a month, your town will slaughter a large animal and roast it over a huge bonfire. It's easy to stay alive, and it leaves lots of time for you to explore yourself.
If you want to be alone, you can go off into the jungle and spend a few days out there. If you get lonely, you come back to town, or maybe visit another town. Life is very different in Africa; you don't need to work in large groups to survive and this shapes how culture evolves.
He didn't complain about the West at all; he just described what life was like before the oil rigs came and Western ideals destroyed his culture.
What I am saying is that the culture of the high-tech centralized business ethic you understand and respect is both alien and unnecessary in some of these tropical countries. What makes it necessary to adopt them today in such regions is that Western and European cultures have adopted the practice of endless expansionism and will essentially enslave you if you don't make at least some effort to play the same game and hold your own against the tide of commercial enterprise. These are cultures where money wasn't a necessary invention. --So when you drive down the streets seeing people vending pineapples and you feel the urge to judge them and even perhaps hate them, it is a good idea to recognize the larger patterns at work in the world. If you grew up in the jungle where you were not programmed into an efficient work-bot, then how naturally would you be inclined to adopt the insane-seeming business practices (because they are not necessary at all for a happy life) of the West?
-FL
They provide fodder so that the self-righteous Slashdotter know-it-all can feel superior.
I've met guys like this before, and a good portion of them are just being contrary because they know it bugs people.
Another good portion of them are suffering from some kind of obvious emotional/mental disorder which makes them difficult to be around. So yes, let's all laugh at the distressed people and jump up and down for the trolls.
The only real problem with these sorts of people is that they discredit any ideas which happen to have substance but which tend to get lumped in with and sullied by flat earth thinking.
-FL
But the tinfoil hat is protecting you just fine, right?
No. Thinking protects me. A nice side benefit is that it also means I get to come up with my own jokes and far more useful insights than, well. . .
The other brand of snatched bodies aren't the ones who sing the same hymns over and over in the hopes that the scary ideas will go away. No. The other brand of snatched body is the sort which repeats the same daft joke over and over in the hopes that the scary ideas will go away. It's the same general affliction.
-FL
Communism? I guess you could say it's not a con but it's killed more people in the last 100 years than christianity in 2000.
Hm. Political systems. --And if we're going to point at Communism, we mustn't forget to note that Westernism is also a huge killer, (though I would argue that Westernism derives much of its blood-lust through Christianity; I would say that a lot of what is going on in the Middle East right now, for instance, would not have come about without the bible first being in existence.). But yeah, believing in the lies of one's leadership is very much succumbing to con artists, though I would say that there is one big difference between political ideologies and religion. Religion today is far more optional than whether or not you pay tax. At least in the West. In the Middle East, it seems to be rather more pushy. And if the hard-core religious right gets their way, then a similar brand of pushiness would be replicated here.
-FL
As long as we're applying reason to the Bible, why not acknowledge it as nothing more than a book of bronze age mythology and treat it as such?
Because a bronze age book of mythology can be happily ignored (unless you're a history buff), whereas this book is more than just a collection of crusty stories. It's the seed of a global manipulation which has resulted in more dead/dying/suffering people than any other con I can think of off the top of my head. As much as I frown at myself for doing so, I tend to conclude, "If you decide to stop thinking, then you get to live and die miserably." It's painful to watch, but people get what they deserve. You just need to give them lots of self-destruct room so they don't drag you down with them.
I live in a city with more churches per capita than anywhere else I've seen. You literally cannot walk a hundred meters without passing a cult-house. The creepy singing can be heard on Sundays rising all across the city, and when I acknowledge it, it scares me to the core because you just know how little it would take for these so-called peace-loving people to turn on a dime and become torch-wielding killers at the whim of their controllers. I love Slashdot for keeping me sane on days like that, when I am struck cold by the realization that most of the people around me I consider friendly neighbors might as well be from that Body Snatchers movie.
-FL
You should keep an eye on the three credit reporting agencies. Verizon may also sell your debt to third parties who might continue to come after you.
When it comes to unfair debt collection, the collection agency is in dodgy water. It seems to me that collection agents are going to be rather afraid on some level of a big possible whammy. --That is, they are just a thin legal line away from being an extortion racket. --A company falsely decides that you owe money, sends it into the collection system, and then professional collectors are allowed to harass you until you pony up. On some level, these guys know the accusations which can be leveled at them, and while they may never have heard them, they probably spend a portion of their time having one-sided arguments in the car or shower with invisible accusers. Gotta love those self-imposed fears; they always take on the meanest possible face when in the imagination. So that stuff is always gnawing on at least some employees at the collection office.
It's like dealing with government employees during a tax audit, (been there). I noticed in the couple of civil servants I dealt with during the process that they were clearly harboring a gnawing guilt, that they were permanently stressed over the fact that at any moment the subject might leap up and scold them for being over-paid system leaches. I suspect they spend a good deal of internal energy dealing with this guilt or trying to shore up rational defenses against the idea. I remember the agents I was dealing with offering up excuses and defenses for things I'd never said or even implied, and one lady who reacted very strongly when she was questioning my write-off of a bicycle, (which she at first Ah-Hahed! as though it were evidence of my trying to get away with something). When I explained that I didn't drive a car and that a bicycle was my primary means of transport partly because that's all I could afford, she physically recoiled and started blustering apologies and rationalizations not just for her assumption, but for her own use of a car. It was as though I had laid out a big speech about how she was using tax-payer dollars on a selfish means of transport when she could easily take the bus to work, a job where she shook down people who worked harder than her at more worthwhile tasks and why was she being such a coward in life rather than go out there into the world and get a real job like everybody else? --All of that unspoken accusation was suddenly on the table, and it had all come from her! Her baggage. Cool. --Without even trying or ever really pushing the advantage, I discovered all kinds of buttons you could press in these people to torment them if I had chosen to do so. And that was just during a routine audit.
So unless you're dealing with a sociopath, then the same general rules will apply to collection agents; a low level fear that what they are doing is questionable or that it might in fact be illegal if the paperwork isn't clean; those fears are automatically going to reside in their minds, or at least their bosses' minds. Just bringing a little pressure to bear, not even directly, but simply through asking questions which are normal enough on the surface, but which will cause the secondary cascade of unspoken thoughts to lead to thoughts tied to fear buttons, (like that thing with the bicycle), will make their day that much more difficult and your case that much less appealing. And unlike with government employees, these guys aren't guaranteed to have a job the next month if they don't bring home lots of bacon for the company, so anything which makes your case file seem like one to shuffle to the bottom of the heap is good.
But mainly the big thing is the amount they hope to collect from you. It has to be at least equal the cost of employing the agent during the time required to process your case. The longer you drag it out, the less and less you are worth. If you kick up a fuss and insist that the company which sold them your 'debt' was n
You just saved me ten minutes of my life pointing out the obvious to yet another corporate apologist. (And I'm not the OP). --And where do they get those guys, anyway? At what point does a person start despising humanity so much that they figure the populace deserves punishment simply for existing?
-FL
Google: Multi-billion dollar world-wide infrastructure where they like to build their data centers near power generation stations because they use so much electricity, own thousands of miles of 'dark fiber' and even after years of this build-up, STILL give generally reliable search results and with a few exceptions, I more or less buy their, "do-no-evil" tag line. All this as a result of two guys who thought, "Hey, what if somebody made an uncluttered search engine with unobtrusive advertising that was REALLY, ACTUALLY user-friendly and didn't suck to use?"
Versus. . .
Me too, and we're so 'Cuil' because our imagination-lacking, safe-road and thus lame investors and marketing people figured we needed that MTV-zing to be hip with the kids, y'know?
Get real. What are they bringing to the table which is new? If nothing, then they are just lame opportunists who probably don't know what the heck they are doing because if they did, they're recognize that they're already in stupid-land. UNLESS, and this is my cynical side, there are some smart people involved who are actually just out to fleece investors with an "Honest, see, we're Really Trying" make-work company which everybody with a brain knows isn't actually doing anything but they didn't want to get real jobs.
I can think of a dozen truly useful things one could do with 25 million dollars, but which will not happen because of everything wrong with the world which makes the above scenario a common reality.
The sad thing is that this stupid start-up is getting press. I guess the same is true of internet start-ups as was true of Joseph Goebbels; say it loud and often enough and it becomes true. The bigger the lie, and all that. --Until it comes crashing to the ground when reality kicks in, of course. (Which also tends to happen with governments built on lies).
But on the off-chance that I'm being unfairly cynical, I will put in this one proviso; MAYBE, just MAYBE there are some people at the top of 'Cuil' whose personal passion actually, honestly, really is to build a better search engine and improve the world, in which case, Good For Them!
Whoa. I didn't even make it half-way through that sentence with a straight face. And I tried, too! Oh, well nevermind.
-FL
"I'm clearly not engineer enough to be reading this for fun."
Interesting ideas, and technically bonded together very, very tightly. -Like on the atomic level. But golly! After reading about one third through, I found the stream of story simply too chock-full of nuts and fiber, (with too few raisins); thick enough to walk on. So I ended up skipping along the surface to get to the punch line. Short stories are hard to write, and this proves it.
-FL
1300+ comments and 99.9% of them revealing and encouraging. We've collectively put a MOUNTAIN of thought into personal health. Our bodies get a lot of focus. --The medium is the message, eh? Says a ton about our society.
You can pull a Veidt, (Watchmen) and just skim over this vast field of posts and within a few minutes know pretty much every solution there is when it comes to balancing a sit-all-the-time job with trying to keep the body healthy.
I might as well pitch in with my own little story, since the motivation to share IS almost overwhelming. (People put so much thought into this and are so rarely asked what their solutions are).
1. An Interesting Observation Everybody has a different body, but in the geek world, there's a big generalization one can make; we're either tall, skinny guys, or we're tubs. Don't really know why that is, but that genetic skew seems to be a fact. I'm a tall skinny guy, perhaps this post will be useful for two-thirds of anybody skimming over this.
2. Quality and Quantity. By Default. Being just this side of some sort of condition other people get drugged for but which I've been lucky enough to be able to live around, I tend to get so into whatever it is I'm working on that I forget to eat. Hunger becomes just this annoying thing which I'll deal with after I tinker with this one line I'm working on for just ten more minutes. . . Eventually the stomach stops complaining. So long as you don't spend a lot of time in this state, (you'll make yourself sick if you do. I know.), and when you do eat, go out of your way to eat the good stuff, so that when you do eat the junk it doesn't tend to cause a problem. --As for the Good Stuff, nutrition-wise, that whole "Listen to your body" thing really, really works, I find. If people quiet down long enough to hear the internal cues, and if they bind that with some basic nutritional research, then 95% of the grocery store becomes off-limits, as do fast-food joints and the like. I live in a city with a LOT of fat people who are fat as a direct result of their diet and because they are simply not paying attention. The body doesn't want to feel bad, and so if you only eat that which makes your body feel better after having eaten it, then you're a long way to where most people want to be.
3. Exercise. I happen to own a bike instead of a car, and so when I need to get anywhere, I'm stressing the body in a good way by necessity. In the Winter, I'm on foot. Beyond that, when I'm feeling a little too thin upper body-wise, I might do some push-ups or exercises of some sort, but that's only for aesthetic reasons which I soon give up on. Girls seem to find me attractive enough, so I figure as long as I'm happy and healthy enough to experience life however I need to, then why waste time?
Okay. That's my two-cents. Thanks to everybody for sharing! These kinds of questions remind me of the Big Common Connection. Despite my sometimes-grumbling, I really do think you're all pretty awesome!
-FL
I ever enjoyed were the early ones when there were no cheats available. Figuring out the very first puzzle in The Hitchhiker's Guide text adventure was really cool. A friend and I were fighting with it for hours. --Or rather, we were stumped by it and then we discussed other things, and goofed around like teenage boys, and then when we went back to it, my friend suddenly realized, "Hold on. . . One of the five senses is missing. . ." And he keyed in "Smell" or whatever it was, and the game opened up. That was awesome! But it took time and a willingness to let problems stew for days and weeks on end. But life was slower in the Eighties.
Later on, the best puzzle game I played was Full Throttle. The story and voice acting made the puzzles worth solving. But for the most part, puzzles were just highly annoying things which weren't fun so much as they were annoying. Back when I still played video games, I remember being deeply frustrated with Lucas Arts Star Wars games because they kept making me stop and figure out stupid on-off switch sequences when all I wanted to do was blast storm troopers.
I have spent some time with those tower-defense games, and they are sort of like dynamic puzzles in and of themselves. I suppose all games are like that in the end; learning how to win is a matter of working out successful pathways through computer logic. Such is life, really, except in computer games, you are limited in that you are only allowed to solve problems in the way envisioned by the game writers. That was always the most ridiculous thing about video games. Everybody has experienced that one, I am sure. "But there's a graphic of a wrench right there on the work bench! Why can't I pick it up? Why do I need to find a stupid coat hanger to fish the key out of the drain pipe when I could just disassemble the plumbing? Who wrote this silly program, anyway???"
Real life is a better puzzle game than any computer could offer. The difference is that the rewards come less quickly and you have to actually sweat and take real risks. But people have proven that they are much more willing to put up with digital mediocrity in order to have fast, safe albeit empty rewards rather than live and win for real.
How many real experience points did you earn today?
-FL
I remember my father bringing home one of the early consumer hand-held calculators. It took a stack of triple A cells and it came with a wall socket adapter. It cost a couple hundred dollars. The whole family was very impressed and my father looked like a kid with a shiny new wagon. Heck, he can't have been more than twenty-something at the time. Go Dad!
The public went bananas for small calculators. They were the 'It' machine of the day. The digital watch or the Walkman. Everybody had to have one, and the big electronics companies all went crazy, because they thought they were going to make a mint. They were wrong. Tons of competition drove prices down and innovations up, (and according to the three minutes of internet research I just did) it was tough to make a lot of profit on calculators. Today, as we all know, hand-held calculators are basically given away for free. The sort of thing you dig through the house junk drawer when you lose the one you normally use. As it should be.
I don't know how the wrist-watch craze went, and even though Sony did gangbusters with their Walkman, you can get a portable music player for, (ahem) a song these days. Now its time for the portable computer to go through this process. --The difference now is that when all those other devices came along, I responded with, "Yeah. That's a good idea! I wonder why I didn't care at all before now?" (Of course, it all had to do with my age and where I was in life at the time.) Today it's different. I've been wanting a light, small, affordable portable computer for years. I even have a used one from the late 90's that I garnered from eBay and which I use every other day. --I was using it only half an hour ago to write some stuff while away from the desktop PC. That thing was well over a thousand dollars new, and it's an under-powered, hinge-cracked piece of gosa on its last legs. I've literally used it to death, and I'll be needing to replace it shortly.
The only question I have is this. . . Will I replace it with another old used machine from ten years ago or with one of these new ones? It's a real question. The new ones are flashy and slick and powerful, but they are missing the one feature I truly adore in my old device. "Instant On". Time will tell.
In another year, (assuming we aren't all dazed, starving and licking our radioactive wounds), we'll see prices dropping from all the competition. The pattern is the same; all the antenna of the manufacturers prick up when somebody demonstrates a successful new device, and copy cat machines go head to head in a market place hungry for, "Faster! Cheaper! Better!" Then the next thing you know, they're basically free, doing everything they ever promised, becoming a piece of our daily reality we take for granted.
And that day can't come soon enough.
-FL
I do not understand this obsession with cheap crap on Slashdot recently... This $130 "laptop" is a fine example. Seriously, I'm lost... why would anyone consider buying such thing?
This question has been asked before and I'm sure it will be asked again. But you know the answers, as do the millions of people who are excited about these devices. Anybody with a scrap of imagination can work it out; you're just asking because you feel like making a fuss over something which you have decided doesn't fit with who you are.
-FL
God, I can't stand you corporate assholes.
The name, the business plan, everything screams, "Marketing Think Tank".
The difference between you manipulative scum and something which isn't you, is that you don't know what Passion and Honesty are. They don't come in a bottle, and they cannot be engineered in a board room. You crocodiles are the kinds of people who think, "Ah, I understand that if you turn the corners of your mouth up, then people are more likely to let you exploit them."
The sad, sick, depressing and altogether pathetic part is that often you vile pieces of worm dung are successful. Luckily, in this case, my spider sense is telling me that you are about to amount to a big fat nothing. You're probably just in this to scam investors and you have no real interest in actually even making a successful search engine; that's just part of the horse & pony show. All you have to do is demonstrate due diligence, and pocket the check. At least the public isn't the piece of cake which happens to be in your sights this time around. Fuck you and enjoy your worm dung lives. --But you'd better be quick; your brethren in banking and industry have seen to it that all your money will be worth less than toilet paper by the middle of next year. (Because you see, toilet paper is more comfortable and absorbent to wipe with.)
"Cuil."
-FL
My hometown still has a law on the books that cars aren't allowed to scare the horses travelling down Main Street. Anyone want to get up in arms about that one while we're at it?
If I were living in your town, I certainly might complain if some heavily lobbied government group suddenly started forcing people to buy licenses based on that law.
-FL
The thing is. . . Once one accepts the possibility of aliens, then all of those other subjects you mentioned gain validity. They're all connected. Essentially they all find their foundation on the notion that there are some states of being which do not revolve exclusively around the idea of material existence. This idea is easily dismissed, (it is certainly discouraged by academia), and the field has been laden with so many mountains of horrid nonsense that any sane person is easily put off.
However, once one decides to actually study the field honestly and consistently, it is rather quickly learned that there IS something to the idea. Quite a lot, actually.
But many never, never look, preferring to rest their belief structures upon ideas safe from the terrible danger of being laughed at. Awareness doesn't come cheap; it never has, but I prefer to base my beliefs not just on what I am told it is acceptable to think about. I'd rather look and think for myself. Basically, the moment I sense that I might be socially punished for exploring an idea, it revs me up. It certainly doesn't mean that everything I look into is valid. Indeed, much of it is twisted half-truth garbage created by egos and wishful thinking, but I wouldn't know that without looking. And I also wouldn't know that some of it, some very powerful bits of it, are entirely real. --And I'll be damned if I'm going to be bullied by intellectual cowards into believing only that which I am told is okay to believe; that which is officially sanctioned. I find that thought offensive in the extreme, and I cannot understand why more people don't bristle at the idea. Being socially manipulated by the fear of ridicule is for the birds.
The fascinating thing I've found is that such knowledge comes with its own automatic safeguards. When it comes to the non-physical, you absolutely HAVE to decide for yourself not to be scared and not to be closed. In the arena of the mind, scientific reductionism doesn't work the same way it does in the material realm; proof is very difficult to force upon those who choose to close their perceptions to it, and further, one of the things one eventually learns is that forcing people to go against their choices is a fundamental violation which carries penalties. The full spectrum of reality is only for the courageous.
-FL