The scale difference between your example (which is already a scale example) and interstellar travel is like backing out of the garage (not even onto the street) compared with driving cross-country. And backing out of the garage is the furthest humans have ever gone. By itself, it would be like backing out of the garage (still in the driveway) compared to driving cross-country 26 times.
You have re-stated Mr. Stross's position. We get it. The galaxy is a big place.
So what?
The only way we will get to another star I believe is if there is the discovery of a "free" energy source and a complete jump in our understanding of the universe.
Indeed. The physical rules of reality may not change, but what all those rules happen to be, we do not yet know, and how people operate within the ones we do know about can most certainly change.
Please note; the grass boats I used in my tongue-in-cheek metaphore needed you to take carry the power source with the rower. Spanish Galleons did not share this restriction. Until the 'free' energy source of wind power was realized, it probably didn't seem obvious either.
Charlie Stross does not know even a fraction of everything, and as such, has little business suggesting what will and will not be possible in the future. Based on our past adventures as humans, as one poster aptly put, the Magic Wand is by far the safe bet.
And, of course, those crop circles remain.
The universe outside the door is far more full of possibility than most people choose to be aware of.
Aztec Elder: "Assuming that there even IS another land across the great Eastern Ocean, it will never be reached! Listen as I entrance you with my 3 wise points of wisdom. . .
"Point 1: The Distances are really huge! If your hut was this sea shell, and the next city down the coast (which as we all know takes a full week to paddle to in our finest grass row-boat), is this pink rock I place one hand span away from the sea shell, then the Land Across the Ocean would be, -wait for it- fifty Aztec miles away! Think about that! It can't be done, durn it!"
Assembled audience: "ooooh."
Aztec Elder: "Point 2. Blah blah blah."
Assembled audience: "aaaah."
Aztec Elder: "Point 3. Blah blah blah."
Assembled audience: "Say, what are those huge boat-looking things on the horizon. . ?"
-FL -Who keeps leaving these circles in my durn field?!
think instead you watched a whole lot of Happy Texas and the like. What you describe doesn't sound like the state I visited and contracted in.
While I am happy to defer to somebody who spent more time there than me, especially when it comes to negative impressions being trumped by positive ones, my impressions were nonetheless based on lots of close up and personal contact and not on television shows or what have you. I also met some really nice people, but there was certainly an undercurrent of sexual stress on various levels. And too much oil money. Wow.
Jeezuz. That's evidence of Redmond's conceit and delusional world-view.
From what I've experienced, people are mad when they cannot get a laptop pre-loaded with something other than Vista. I can't really imagine anybody wanting to go out of their way to install it if they didn't have to. Maybe they're just worried about the Chinese horning in on their strong-armed sales through small OEM dealers.
Cuz I can't see the public going to any effort to load up a copy of something which won't let them play half their media.
If your sister can carry a gun, then so can any hysterical women capable of mis-identifying her assailant.
Great.
I've spent some time in Texas, and the whole place seemed to be filled with cartoon-crazy amounts of private oil wealth and stressed out women aching to cheat on whatever guy they managed to desperation-marry at the end of highschool so their friends wouldn't laugh at them.
That's a link to an Amazon page. I don't think anyone's going to go buy his book just to see what you're talking about. Usually claims of a Vast Pharmaceutical Conspiracy to Suppress Magical Cures lead to offers to Purchase Magical Mystery Magnets, and aren't worth taking seriously. Given that the reviews on the Amazon page say that Becker purports to provide a scientific basis for homeopathy, faith healing and qigong, I'm unimpressed--since these things, you know, don't work.
Good. You did a (tiny) bit of research before speaking this time.
It's not my place to tell you how to make choices, or to judge the ones you do make, but I will say this. . .
Your assumptions about the content of Becker's book are totally off base. Yes, you can see only what you want to see by cherry picking reviews in order to support your pre-constructed world view, but that leads you nowhere. Weren't you the one who was telling me that I ought to do some reading. This does not apply to you?
It has been my experience that the people who claim to know crackpot from non-crackpot without doing any research often tend to have explored very little which has not been rubber-stamped by TV or Big Media. --Or they will have looked at a small number of flakey theories, (often furnished by Big Media itself), make sweeping judgments and look no further. Typically, though they often claim loudly to the contrary, I have found such people to be totally unwilling to truly explore the world in the first place for fear that their safely constructed knowledge structures will never be challenged and thus made un-safe. Ignorance often tends to be linked to fear.
Instead of reading crackpot science, you should read some of the real stuff. Amphibian dedifferentiation has been studied extensively. Unfortunately, we ain't salamanders.
Crackpot? Hm. You clearly don't know much about the author you're insulting. It always amazes me that people who supposedly love science can rule their lives through ignorance and blind judgement; the very antithesis of empirical thinking. Did you even bother to follow the link?
Don't have the time for that, but you do have the time to write a response?
Cells in salamanders can de-differentiate. That's how they can re-grow arms.
When studied, it was discovered that very low level DC currents were measured throughout the body and at the wound area on tested salamander. Later tests determined that artificially stimulating the cells with DC current triggered the cells to de-differentiate.
Interesting!
Even more interesting, the cells of more complex organisms, (humans), also react to low level DC current, and in fact, naturally occurring DC current plays a role in the normal growth and healing cycles of cells. All manner of tests have been performed, leading to a variety of strange discoveries, such as the finding that human cancer cells increase their growth rate by several orders of magnitude when exposed to electrical fields.
Why has this never been studied in depth? Well, the multi-billion dollar cancer and stem cell research industry would be upset if new and simple knowledge were to come to light. Conspiracy theory? Who cares. Salamanders can re-grow arms and nobody in the main-stream scientific community seems to have bothered to look at this closely. Apparently, the scientific explanation for how Salamanders do this is slip-shod at best; the semi-official explanation is that Salamander cells don't really de-differentiate, but rather, somehow, new stem cells migrate through the blood to the region of the wound. (This by people who have not actually looked at the puzzle closely, but who would lose stem cell research grant money if it were accepted that Salamander cells can do the 'impossible' (de-differentiate). How's that for the grand and noble scientific community?
You can read all about this, and all manner of other fascinating elements of electromagnetics as they relate to biological life in Robert O. Becker's book on the subject.
Incidentally, EM from cell phones and powerlines is covered in some depth, and several mechanisms by which low-power EM pollution can have a profound impact on living tissues, and the nervous system.
Typically, however, most people don't like to hear stuff like that as it means their cell phones and WiFi and other beloved toys are suddenly suspect. Awww.
Contract firms are not chosen based on their performance. They are based on whose political friends happen to be in a position to profit from the giving away of tons of public money. When you add cronyism to the mix, your "competition breeds excellence" model falls apart. --Unless excellence refers only to the efficiency with which money is made, keeping in mind that the goal of most corporate entities is to make the maximum amount of money with the minimum effort. Quality of product might fit in there somewhere, but it's rarely the prime goal. Having pollical friends who will channel vast wealth to you while shielding you if you screw up for providing a shoddy product is a VERY efficient way to make money, and it appears to characterize a significant portion of the government model regardless of whether work is outsourced or not.
I do recognize the inherent truths in your argument, however. The problem is having a pile of tax money to pay for the job and corrupt politicians who are in charge of dispensing it. If you remove corruption, then your model, which works on the principal of 'greed', would indeed work better. The problem is, corruption and greed are tightly linked if they are not indeed the same thing.
So what's the solution?
On this planet, there isn't a one size fits all answer. You need to make your own choices and live by your own rules of conduct, and move in circles which agree with those rules and stay out of circles which do not. In my circles, secrecy and manipulation are certainly not highly prized commodities. Honesty and personal integrity are.
Reboot was the only time I enjoyed a CG TV series, and probably because they made the fake-ness of the images a key component in the writing.
With this new Star Wars production, I was really hoping for a live-action Firefly-esque story set in the Star Wars universe. Good writing and beautiful visuals? How can you beat that? Well, certainly not with a bunch of video game cut-scenes.
Unless the writing in this new thing is stupendous, and Lucas hasn't offered that since Young Indiana Jones, this will be glanced at only as a curiosity. If that. What a waste.
I read the article you linked to. All it did was refute an internet chain letter. So what? Even though he danced around the fact, the author even conceded that there were known problems with Aspartame. He even snidely commented. . .
"A recent MIT study reaffirms that aspartame is harmless for most users, but again, skeptics will object that the research was funded by a grant from the NutraSweet Company and therefore cannot be trusted."
Well, yes, actually, the fact that a lab is funded by the same people who are suspected of poisoning the public is indeed a very good reason to not trust the results. Was the author born yesterday?
Just because one concerned truth-seeker comes off as sounding hysterical, it does not mean that a toxic substance is suddenly not toxic.
Read through that, including all of the links at the bottom. Why not talk about dihydrogen monoxide while you're at it? It's responsible for everything from leukemia to water poisoning. It's so dangerous that it will literally eat away unprotected metal if exposed for a number of years. It's like an acid! Now that's powerful stuff - and powerful dangerous!
Okay, I read through the link you provided AND the associated links, and none of it was worth a dented copper penny; all it did was re-state that, "We're not going to offer any science, but Aspartame is safe. Honest!" --Two of the links even went right back to the FDA, which was complicit in allowing Aspartame onto the market in the first place. If they lied once, then how on earth does it make sense to allow them any credibility a second time? That's just silly.
The Time Magazine article even reiterates the old Monsanto saw; --that the Methanol aka, wood alcohol, which Aspartame breaks down into isn't a problem because Methanol also appears in tomatoes, (which everybody knows are safe, right?). --A true claim which nonetheless fails to add that tomatoes also contain ethanol which chemically neutralizes the toxic effects of methanol, which is NOT true for Aspartame or any of the products Aspartame is used in. That Time Magazine can make such a stupid editorial mistake as to reprint Monsanto PR spin only illustrates just how poorly researched the article was. (Not surprising for a lousy propaganda rag like Time, but that's beside the point.)
The point is that you have provided rotten links which do nothing at all to prove the safety of a toxic substance.
I'd be curious to know if there are any mitigating chemicals in berries. --Monsanto used a similar half-fact to help quell concerns about their product, Aspartame.
--That is, that the Methanol (wood alcohol) which Aspartame breaks down into is not a problem because Methanol also appears in tomatoes. Monsanto failed to add that the Methanol in tomatoes is canceled out by the Ethanol which also naturally appears in tomatoes, but which does not appear in Aspartame.
Read a book or something, poser. Ya can't PROVE anything is "safe" - but a few EVENTS can prove concrete risk. See the difference ??
Poser? Posing as what? Or was he simply posing a question you are offended by?
Interestingly, you are right; he should read a book or two. There have been several publications by many people performing hard science which do indeed cite EVENTS which demonstrate peculiar biological effects which suggest that there is a great deal more about the relationship between EM and human biology than most people are aware of. The book which stands out in particular is Robert O. Becker's work.
Step 1. "Put Mind-Fogging juice in an exciting product everybody wants. In fact, make the Mind-Fogging juice a primary component of that product."
Step 2. "When people start asking, 'Is Mind-Fogging juice safe?' you give a lot of money to PR agents and have them stand guard over the media, propping up stories and studies which make people asking the question look like alarmist idiots, while working to remove funding and media attention from those trying to answer the question honestly."
Step 3. "Offer misleading scientific facts to the public such as; 'Mind-Fogging juice cannot possibly burn brain cells, because there simply is never enough concentration during the use of the Exciting Product to cause brain cells to burn.' --all while studiously ignoring the fact that Mind-Fogging juice at low dosages has a narcotic-like effect which causes the brain to function poorly."
Step 4. "As one of many on-going efforts in this campaign, promote 'The Dangers of Mind-Fogging Juice' expose stories which are over-the-top and stupid. Then you let the public feel as though they are coming to their own conclusions about the relative safety of Mind-Fogging juice, while patting themselves on the back for feeling more clever and informed than the purveyors of such stories. --This is easy to do scince, like any religion, the consuming public is more than willing to hear only calming reports about their beloved Exciting Product and to use any excuse to not think about any possible problems."
Step 5. "Sell even more Exciting Products which use Mind-Fogging juice, since this makes people even less able to sort truth from fiction."
My examples are not hypothetical. They are two actual cases that happened. In one case there were cameras, and a sucessful prosecution, in the other case, no cameras, long drawn out court case and most of the thugs walked.
When you are basing whether or not to accept an entire social engineering project on two cherry-picked sample cases, you are deep in hypothesis country.
I'm not going to give you any concrete examples where the cameras were abused because I'm lazy and I know I'm right. How do I know? Because regular people are ALWAYS corruptible. If you give them sticks, they'll abuse them. If you give them guns and a badge, same thing. Why give them more power?
At least with a cop with a stick, I know that I only have to worry about abuse when there's a cop around. But with 24 hour surveillance. . . No thanks. --I don't want regular, corruptible people watching me all the time. It doesn't make me feel safer. It makes me feel boxed in and controlled. You said yourself that you didn't believe that the legal system was a level playing field. It's not. It's corrupt. --And giving cameras to people who are corrupt, especially when they are spending millions of your tax rupees to do it, is stupid. Men are getting rich by selling fear. It's an old gimmick.
Negative social engineering? It means training and molding a populace into a shape which does not serve their higher needs and interests; which works to make people lesser than what they could be. Controlling people with fear is a diminishing act, not an encouraging one.
If "injecting current" from Earth's magnetic field is how acupuncture works, I will eat my hat. It's a very nice hat, my sister made it; which I tell you just so you know how serious I am.
Hmm. Amazingly, I feel no desire to argue with you one way or the other. This is probably because I put so little stock in people who make assumptions without asking questions.
Why do people constantly focus on ionization as the problem?
Brain cells respond to EM in ways inherent in biological design. EM has been demonstrated to have all manner of effects upon the human body and nervous system. Acupuncture is one of the more obvious ones; (metal needle inserted and set to rotating cuts through the Earth's magnetic field and 'injects' a current into the patient. This affects how cells function. Pain responses can be turned off.)
Basically EM in a random noise makes the brain fuzz out and it makes people easier to manipulate. It makes them dozey and dumb.
Several of those devices are certainly suspect, but solar flares and such are not quite so worrisome in that we've got the Earth's magnetic field protecting us. The aurora borealis is an example of this magnetic deflector in action.
EM fogs the brain and makes people dull and easy to manipulate, and because it affects the very organ which we used to detect problems, we detect no problems. We just get dumber and duller and easier to manipulate.
What do you reckon the outcome would have been if the Jury had seen them on tape?
When the system is that corrupt, then you can also expect the abuses of a total surveillance state to be similarly absurd.
And you can bet that camera footage isn't going to prevent the rich from surfing above the throngs. In any case, your example is hypothetical mumbo-jumbo designed to elicit an irrational emotional response to a problem which logic would give an opposite answer to. It's an old trick; make people angry enough over some absurdity so that they allow terrible laws to be passed which are designed entirely for other purposes, namely to limit freedom of everybody and not just the subjects of an absurd and microscopic example.
As I said before; people who are prone to committing crimes will be caught and put away. The U.S., for example, currently has a larger percentage of its population in prison than it has at any other time in history. And this dour state of affairs is achieved without a total surveillance system in place. I would suggest that many of those people are not even true criminals, but rather are people who have been the subject of negative social engineering and thus criminalized.
I saw a video clip of some you gentlemen kicking some poor unfortunates head in while he lay on the road. Stamped his head against the kerb stones, several times.
You were watching propaganda designed to sell you a bad bill of goods.
The best way to sell a bad bill of goods to somebody is to mix in a few good nuts with all the poison pills you want people to consume.
Interestingly, even with the cameras in place, the crime you describe still took place, so it didn't make things any safer for the victim. Further, jokers who attack people generally find their way to prison regardless. That's just how it works. So since the crime took place even with cameras in place, and since these guys were headed for prison anyway, how does that validate a surveillance state?
Perhaps it's because when hiring noobs, those pretty pieces of paper which universities give to their graduates are considered by many to be a more reputable proof of skill than an individual's claim of being self-taught.
Just because the world believes employment must only work in one particular way doesn't make it true. Apprenticeship is a perfectly valid way to get into a field, and in my experience, it leads to excellent work and powerful connections, and it's a helluva lot faster than the normal system. --Not to mention you don't have to rack up huge student debt.
Slashdot Mirror
You have re-stated Mr. Stross's position. We get it. The galaxy is a big place.
So what?
The only way we will get to another star I believe is if there is the discovery of a "free" energy source and a complete jump in our understanding of the universe.
Indeed. The physical rules of reality may not change, but what all those rules happen to be, we do not yet know, and how people operate within the ones we do know about can most certainly change.
Please note; the grass boats I used in my tongue-in-cheek metaphore needed you to take carry the power source with the rower. Spanish Galleons did not share this restriction. Until the 'free' energy source of wind power was realized, it probably didn't seem obvious either.
Charlie Stross does not know even a fraction of everything, and as such, has little business suggesting what will and will not be possible in the future. Based on our past adventures as humans, as one poster aptly put, the Magic Wand is by far the safe bet.
And, of course, those crop circles remain.
The universe outside the door is far more full of possibility than most people choose to be aware of.
-FL
"Point 1: The Distances are really huge! If your hut was this sea shell, and the next city down the coast (which as we all know takes a full week to paddle to in our finest grass row-boat), is this pink rock I place one hand span away from the sea shell, then the Land Across the Ocean would be, -wait for it- fifty Aztec miles away! Think about that! It can't be done, durn it!"
Assembled audience: "ooooh."
Aztec Elder: "Point 2. Blah blah blah."
Assembled audience: "aaaah."
Aztec Elder: "Point 3. Blah blah blah."
Assembled audience: "Say, what are those huge boat-looking things on the horizon. . ?"
-FL -Who keeps leaving these circles in my durn field?!
While I am happy to defer to somebody who spent more time there than me, especially when it comes to negative impressions being trumped by positive ones, my impressions were nonetheless based on lots of close up and personal contact and not on television shows or what have you. I also met some really nice people, but there was certainly an undercurrent of sexual stress on various levels. And too much oil money. Wow.
-FL
From what I've experienced, people are mad when they cannot get a laptop pre-loaded with something other than Vista. I can't really imagine anybody wanting to go out of their way to install it if they didn't have to. Maybe they're just worried about the Chinese horning in on their strong-armed sales through small OEM dealers.
Cuz I can't see the public going to any effort to load up a copy of something which won't let them play half their media.
-FL
Great.
I've spent some time in Texas, and the whole place seemed to be filled with cartoon-crazy amounts of private oil wealth and stressed out women aching to cheat on whatever guy they managed to desperation-marry at the end of highschool so their friends wouldn't laugh at them.
No thank-you.
-FL
Good. You did a (tiny) bit of research before speaking this time.
It's not my place to tell you how to make choices, or to judge the ones you do make, but I will say this. . .
Your assumptions about the content of Becker's book are totally off base. Yes, you can see only what you want to see by cherry picking reviews in order to support your pre-constructed world view, but that leads you nowhere. Weren't you the one who was telling me that I ought to do some reading. This does not apply to you?
It has been my experience that the people who claim to know crackpot from non-crackpot without doing any research often tend to have explored very little which has not been rubber-stamped by TV or Big Media. --Or they will have looked at a small number of flakey theories, (often furnished by Big Media itself), make sweeping judgments and look no further. Typically, though they often claim loudly to the contrary, I have found such people to be totally unwilling to truly explore the world in the first place for fear that their safely constructed knowledge structures will never be challenged and thus made un-safe. Ignorance often tends to be linked to fear.
-FL
Crackpot? Hm. You clearly don't know much about the author you're insulting. It always amazes me that people who supposedly love science can rule their lives through ignorance and blind judgement; the very antithesis of empirical thinking. Did you even bother to follow the link?
Don't have the time for that, but you do have the time to write a response?
How rational.
-FL
When studied, it was discovered that very low level DC currents were measured throughout the body and at the wound area on tested salamander. Later tests determined that artificially stimulating the cells with DC current triggered the cells to de-differentiate.
Interesting!
Even more interesting, the cells of more complex organisms, (humans), also react to low level DC current, and in fact, naturally occurring DC current plays a role in the normal growth and healing cycles of cells. All manner of tests have been performed, leading to a variety of strange discoveries, such as the finding that human cancer cells increase their growth rate by several orders of magnitude when exposed to electrical fields.
Why has this never been studied in depth? Well, the multi-billion dollar cancer and stem cell research industry would be upset if new and simple knowledge were to come to light. Conspiracy theory? Who cares. Salamanders can re-grow arms and nobody in the main-stream scientific community seems to have bothered to look at this closely. Apparently, the scientific explanation for how Salamanders do this is slip-shod at best; the semi-official explanation is that Salamander cells don't really de-differentiate, but rather, somehow, new stem cells migrate through the blood to the region of the wound. (This by people who have not actually looked at the puzzle closely, but who would lose stem cell research grant money if it were accepted that Salamander cells can do the 'impossible' (de-differentiate). How's that for the grand and noble scientific community?
You can read all about this, and all manner of other fascinating elements of electromagnetics as they relate to biological life in Robert O. Becker's book on the subject.
Incidentally, EM from cell phones and powerlines is covered in some depth, and several mechanisms by which low-power EM pollution can have a profound impact on living tissues, and the nervous system.
Typically, however, most people don't like to hear stuff like that as it means their cell phones and WiFi and other beloved toys are suddenly suspect. Awww.
-FL
I do recognize the inherent truths in your argument, however. The problem is having a pile of tax money to pay for the job and corrupt politicians who are in charge of dispensing it. If you remove corruption, then your model, which works on the principal of 'greed', would indeed work better. The problem is, corruption and greed are tightly linked if they are not indeed the same thing.
So what's the solution?
On this planet, there isn't a one size fits all answer. You need to make your own choices and live by your own rules of conduct, and move in circles which agree with those rules and stay out of circles which do not. In my circles, secrecy and manipulation are certainly not highly prized commodities. Honesty and personal integrity are.
-FL
With this new Star Wars production, I was really hoping for a live-action Firefly-esque story set in the Star Wars universe. Good writing and beautiful visuals? How can you beat that? Well, certainly not with a bunch of video game cut-scenes.
Unless the writing in this new thing is stupendous, and Lucas hasn't offered that since Young Indiana Jones, this will be glanced at only as a curiosity. If that. What a waste.
-FL
I read the article you linked to. All it did was refute an internet chain letter. So what? Even though he danced around the fact, the author even conceded that there were known problems with Aspartame. He even snidely commented. . .
"A recent MIT study reaffirms that aspartame is harmless for most users, but again, skeptics will object that the research was funded by a grant from the NutraSweet Company and therefore cannot be trusted."
Well, yes, actually, the fact that a lab is funded by the same people who are suspected of poisoning the public is indeed a very good reason to not trust the results. Was the author born yesterday?
Just because one concerned truth-seeker comes off as sounding hysterical, it does not mean that a toxic substance is suddenly not toxic.
-FL
Okay, I read through the link you provided AND the associated links, and none of it was worth a dented copper penny; all it did was re-state that, "We're not going to offer any science, but Aspartame is safe. Honest!" --Two of the links even went right back to the FDA, which was complicit in allowing Aspartame onto the market in the first place. If they lied once, then how on earth does it make sense to allow them any credibility a second time? That's just silly.
The Time Magazine article even reiterates the old Monsanto saw; --that the Methanol aka, wood alcohol, which Aspartame breaks down into isn't a problem because Methanol also appears in tomatoes, (which everybody knows are safe, right?). --A true claim which nonetheless fails to add that tomatoes also contain ethanol which chemically neutralizes the toxic effects of methanol, which is NOT true for Aspartame or any of the products Aspartame is used in. That Time Magazine can make such a stupid editorial mistake as to reprint Monsanto PR spin only illustrates just how poorly researched the article was. (Not surprising for a lousy propaganda rag like Time, but that's beside the point.)
The point is that you have provided rotten links which do nothing at all to prove the safety of a toxic substance.
-FL
I've been making Ginger-tea for a couple of weeks now. It totally rocks.
I recommend adding a drop or two of vanilla. Yummy.
-FL
--That is, that the Methanol (wood alcohol) which Aspartame breaks down into is not a problem because Methanol also appears in tomatoes. Monsanto failed to add that the Methanol in tomatoes is canceled out by the Ethanol which also naturally appears in tomatoes, but which does not appear in Aspartame.
Just a thought.
-FL
Poser? Posing as what? Or was he simply posing a question you are offended by?
Interestingly, you are right; he should read a book or two. There have been several publications by many people performing hard science which do indeed cite EVENTS which demonstrate peculiar biological effects which suggest that there is a great deal more about the relationship between EM and human biology than most people are aware of. The book which stands out in particular is Robert O. Becker's work.
-FL
Step 2. "When people start asking, 'Is Mind-Fogging juice safe?' you give a lot of money to PR agents and have them stand guard over the media, propping up stories and studies which make people asking the question look like alarmist idiots, while working to remove funding and media attention from those trying to answer the question honestly."
Step 3. "Offer misleading scientific facts to the public such as; 'Mind-Fogging juice cannot possibly burn brain cells, because there simply is never enough concentration during the use of the Exciting Product to cause brain cells to burn.' --all while studiously ignoring the fact that Mind-Fogging juice at low dosages has a narcotic-like effect which causes the brain to function poorly."
Step 4. "As one of many on-going efforts in this campaign, promote 'The Dangers of Mind-Fogging Juice' expose stories which are over-the-top and stupid. Then you let the public feel as though they are coming to their own conclusions about the relative safety of Mind-Fogging juice, while patting themselves on the back for feeling more clever and informed than the purveyors of such stories. --This is easy to do scince, like any religion, the consuming public is more than willing to hear only calming reports about their beloved Exciting Product and to use any excuse to not think about any possible problems."
Step 5. "Sell even more Exciting Products which use Mind-Fogging juice, since this makes people even less able to sort truth from fiction."
Step 6. "Repeat as needed."
-FL
"Disturbing" is clearly a relative term.
Life would be a lot happier if most difficulties were this upsetting.
-FL
When you are basing whether or not to accept an entire social engineering project on two cherry-picked sample cases, you are deep in hypothesis country.
I'm not going to give you any concrete examples where the cameras were abused because I'm lazy and I know I'm right. How do I know? Because regular people are ALWAYS corruptible. If you give them sticks, they'll abuse them. If you give them guns and a badge, same thing. Why give them more power?
At least with a cop with a stick, I know that I only have to worry about abuse when there's a cop around. But with 24 hour surveillance. . . No thanks. --I don't want regular, corruptible people watching me all the time. It doesn't make me feel safer. It makes me feel boxed in and controlled. You said yourself that you didn't believe that the legal system was a level playing field. It's not. It's corrupt. --And giving cameras to people who are corrupt, especially when they are spending millions of your tax rupees to do it, is stupid. Men are getting rich by selling fear. It's an old gimmick.
Negative social engineering? It means training and molding a populace into a shape which does not serve their higher needs and interests; which works to make people lesser than what they could be. Controlling people with fear is a diminishing act, not an encouraging one.
-FL
Hmm. Amazingly, I feel no desire to argue with you one way or the other. This is probably because I put so little stock in people who make assumptions without asking questions.
-FL
Brain cells respond to EM in ways inherent in biological design. EM has been demonstrated to have all manner of effects upon the human body and nervous system. Acupuncture is one of the more obvious ones; (metal needle inserted and set to rotating cuts through the Earth's magnetic field and 'injects' a current into the patient. This affects how cells function. Pain responses can be turned off.)
Basically EM in a random noise makes the brain fuzz out and it makes people easier to manipulate. It makes them dozey and dumb.
-FL
-FL
EM fogs the brain and makes people dull and easy to manipulate, and because it affects the very organ which we used to detect problems, we detect no problems. We just get dumber and duller and easier to manipulate.
Just look at Slashdot.
-FL
When the system is that corrupt, then you can also expect the abuses of a total surveillance state to be similarly absurd.
And you can bet that camera footage isn't going to prevent the rich from surfing above the throngs. In any case, your example is hypothetical mumbo-jumbo designed to elicit an irrational emotional response to a problem which logic would give an opposite answer to. It's an old trick; make people angry enough over some absurdity so that they allow terrible laws to be passed which are designed entirely for other purposes, namely to limit freedom of everybody and not just the subjects of an absurd and microscopic example.
As I said before; people who are prone to committing crimes will be caught and put away. The U.S., for example, currently has a larger percentage of its population in prison than it has at any other time in history. And this dour state of affairs is achieved without a total surveillance system in place. I would suggest that many of those people are not even true criminals, but rather are people who have been the subject of negative social engineering and thus criminalized.
-FL
You were watching propaganda designed to sell you a bad bill of goods.
The best way to sell a bad bill of goods to somebody is to mix in a few good nuts with all the poison pills you want people to consume.
Interestingly, even with the cameras in place, the crime you describe still took place, so it didn't make things any safer for the victim. Further, jokers who attack people generally find their way to prison regardless. That's just how it works. So since the crime took place even with cameras in place, and since these guys were headed for prison anyway, how does that validate a surveillance state?
-FL
Just because the world believes employment must only work in one particular way doesn't make it true. Apprenticeship is a perfectly valid way to get into a field, and in my experience, it leads to excellent work and powerful connections, and it's a helluva lot faster than the normal system. --Not to mention you don't have to rack up huge student debt.
-FL