Man, what a jerk. Personally I liked having so much screen space on which I could click to visit "Teen Movie Critic" ! None of that carpal-tunnel-inducing careful movement of the pointer for me, no sirree bob!:)
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
The 00's are pronounced "the oughts". The great thing about that is that when we're all ancient fogies we'll be able to say "it was back in ought-one" like grizzled old gold prospectors, gol-durn-it!
Dag-nabbit!
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
It is a form of social transformation in that your physical being is not visible to others, only your mind. That, of course, has good points and bad points.
Most things can be done without ever actually seeing the other parties involved... but always remember that the best thing can't be done that way...;) !
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Problem with an article like this is that it makes a huge set of generalizations... I think the reason Open Media is dominated by youth probably has as much to do with younger folks' higher learning curve, as it does with the fact they don't have the money to buy all the stuff they get for free. (Not to say that, at age 22, I've relinquished the piracy I was so gung ho about at 13.)
In any case it certainly suggests that by the time I'm 50 maybe something useful will happen in government and they'll stop dicking around worrying about drugs and communists! (I'll be throwing a party when Strom Thurmond and/or Jesse Helms finally shuffles off the mortal coil...)
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
The more I research this digital music controversy the more convinced I am that the record companies do nobody any good. They're just entrenched, and the government seeing eye-to-eye with them does the people no good at all. They need to question the original motives of the laws they're going so far to protect (i.e. Copyright). The labels are just spewing mediocrity and trying to prevent alternatives.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
1) You CAN compare Darwin's logic to Hitler's. National Socialism (Nazism) was a form of Social Darwinism designed to improve society by eliminating a perceived problem: the Jews. When someone claims that you can improve society by getting rid of People X, how is that fundamentally different?
2) Of course I agree with sustainable development; actually, I'm in favor of negative population growth. My point was NOT to say that increased population growth is good for the species (did you even READ my post?) but to say that mankind's definitions of what is good for the species are arbitrary and therefore Social Darwinism or Eugenics or whatever fall short as a philosophical notion of government.
3) From where do people get this idea that electric cars are plugged in? My cousin actually wrote the book on Electric Cars. I know more about Electric Cars than I want to share. But the plug in thing is a total myth, perpetuated by ignorance... [OFF-TOPIC]
4) Socialism and Unions are not the same thing. I haven't been hanging around trade halls or whatever nonsense you're spouting. All I personally believe is that it is barbaric that government makes grand concessions toward gross polluters like GE yet refuses to pay enough to feed and re-educate a few homeless folks. If you have enough money you can move away from the pollution, otherwise you can sleep on the street. That's Social Darwinism at work in our current government. "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to beg in the streets, steal for food, and sleep under bridges." -Anatole France (from memory).
5) I don't believe "working hard" is a fundamental human behavior. Your argument makes it seem as if all these grand accomplishments are really getting us toward some goal, but I'll be impressed if you can actually tell me what that goal is. All we're doing is puttering around and wasting time before death. (Not that I don't have a job; you'll probably say I'm a janitor, though actually I do research for an arch-capitalist newspaper.) If you're going to try to define human nature ("the most basic factors of human behavior") you really need to to back it up with something besides rhetoric.
I'm not saying you should agree about the Socialism thing--you're welcome to act in your own self-interest or in self-sacrifice as you please--but I'm on top of the Darwin/Hitler thing, I guarantee:) . All I really wanted to do in my original post was keep Darwin's good name from being sullied in the name of social programs, a subject he never touched.
And for trying to save the legacy of one of Britain's finest minds, nobody offers *me* a permit to work in the EU... *sigh*
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
No, I fucked up:) People are stupid across all class lines. But often the poor are less well-educated. Cyclically the lack of money leads toward less educational resources, and the crummy education leads to lack of money; poor districts, such as Biloxi, Mississippi, also have less money to convert into taxes to support schools. So the casinos in Biloxi with equal access for rich and poor can't be doing too much good for the locals, jobs aside. And a rich man's dollar is a much smaller percentage of his treasury than a poor man's dollar.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Yes, that is precisely the logic Hitler used. The term for that is "eugenics"-- trying to cleanse the population of one or another form of apparent ill (in his case, Jews, in your case, the stupid). While it is true that smarter people tend to have smarter kids, there's no real proof that this is necessarily good for evolution under Darwin. For one thing, choosing population as a criteria for evolutionary success, it is not clear that intelligence is a good thing. Higher IQ people breed fewer children. (And our geniuses are bringing us much closer to armageddon than Forrest Gump ever would've.) By this criteria, intelligence is bad for the species.
My point is not to claim that population is a proper criteria for evolutionary success, but rather to point out that Darwin's model doesn't really prove anything about society. Attempts to justify "killing society's failures" through lack of compassion, based on Social Darwinist grounds, assume that whatever element those people have failed at (intelligence in this case) is relevant to the prolonging of the human species. Clearly it ISN'T. The actual attributes that make for a successful branch of offspring can't really be determined. If the human genome is diluted by hereditary stupidity, it doesn't seem to make any difference to Darwin. Ultimately "eugenics" can be reduced to a code word for scapegoating. Killing off all the idiots in the world won't make you more likely to get laid.
I agree that laws protecting stupid people have gotten out of hand. But I wouldn't go so far as to throw Darwin into the equation (and for the record there is a substantial difference between Darwinism and "Social Darwinism" as advocated by philosophers like Herbert Spencer). Darwinism has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with society; don't drag an innocent man's name into the mud.
I think there IS evidence that lousy treatment of society's more unfortunate people leads to crime. Atlantic City is full of same, although I think Las Vegas has been more effective at sweeping crime under the rug (ex post facto). As for those poor saps wasting their grocery money on lotteries, the essential fact is that they should be warned in advance that there is no way to win. This is a failure of public education--most people in our country can barely tell plus from minus. I don't think the lottery can really be justified until there is evidence that everyone can take care of their own finances responsibly. Yes, I'm a Socialist, is that so wrong? At least I'm not tacitly supporting Hitler.
Besides, how much fun is it to slowly pour your money down the drain, that you would let people go hungry for the right to do it? You can model blackjack as follows: randomly take a number between 1 and 100, and if it's below 48 you can double your investment, otherwise I get it. Watch as I become rich and you become poor and suddenly your politics change.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Look, the idea is that as citizens of a society need a government to protect us in certain ways and the support of the citizens legitimizes the government. Without a government, we could go around killing people, sure, but most people prefer the protection. That's the basic idea of democracy (although whether it works is another matter).
A more interesting system might involve the trading of freedoms for, say, fruit. As Richard Stallman has written, the record industry wants us to trade freedom (to copy digital files) for nothing! At least the government's protection racket has a sensible philosophical base, if not practice.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Here's a secret: the stock market is gambling with a higher ratio of returns over risk. And anyone telling you what's going to happen might as well be Dionne Warwick, "for entertainment purposes only," because they will shortly be proven wrong.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
You make it sound like a bad thing. At least the government doesn't threaten to blow you up when you don't pay (it just throws you in jail). This is just Rousseau's Social Contract-- we trade freedoms for security. Protection racket is precisely the point!
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
The lottery/gambling is incredibly exploitative of the poor, who can't afford it as much and are more subject to the myth that you can make money gambling. Online Gambling is much more socially justifiable when you consider that poor folks generally ain't on the Internet. If they're going to outlaw something, they should outlaw gambling as a business!
(I especially hate slot machines.)
(I feel like I'm just rehashing my comments from the online voting section, but I apologize. I just get mad hearing about how many hicks have been bankrupted by video poker machines in convenience stores in South Carolina, etc. etc. etc.)
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
The Real Problem with online voting is not that it provides for the likelihood of hackers. I think a reasonable system can be implemented ultimately, and it's not as if physical voting fraud has been entirely eliminated. Never mind all that.
The Real Problem is the literacy test issue, which still haunts most of the country despite having been outlawed during the Reconstruction. It was once necessary for voters in some Southern states to pass a literacy test before voting, meaning that uneducated ex-slaves would be effectively unable to contribute to the democratic process despite the Constitution's 14th Amendment. Now online voting presents the opportunity for a new computer literacy test--if you've ever watched over the shoulder of a first-time Internet user at a public library, you'd probably see a frustrated person with little comprehension of what's going on. Computers aren't obvious, at least to most of the population! The "digital divide" really exist--I don't know figures off-hand, but essentially a lot of poor folks don't have computers, much less training or Internet access. This means that online voting, for the time being, poses a serious threat to democracy.
Republicans should be going nuts in favor of online voting and the elimination of any other means (although that probably won't happen). Luckily for them, most people wouldn't vote either way so maybe it won't make a difference.
Admittedly counteracting the poverty issue is the issue that elderly folks can't use computers either. They're more likely to vote conservative (by accident if not by choice (ask my Grandma)), so Republicans may pay as well for the conversion, should one ever occur. However online voting is fundamentally ideal for the elderly--not having to leave the house--and could be established in retirement homes.
Even though online voting does NOT mean the end of physical voting, surely the switch would change priorities, perhaps shrinking the number of physical polling places. I'm a big proponent of online voting, but it should not be established countrywide until it can be demonstrated that equal access is ensured. Democracy is only real when everyone has a voice.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Does anybody remember Wasteland? You're probably all too young to remember what is STILL one of the best RPGs ever written (and also credited with the introduction of NPC's). Not exactly a linear story, but rudimentary sprite-based graphics... The point is, graphics ain't shite. Nethack is better than 99% of the crap they've been spewing the last few years.
Also, along the same lines, Britney Spears sucks. You might hear me go "wooo!" with my bare midriff shakin' at the Blood, Sweat & Tears concert though...
Oops... I seem to have talked at more length than I intended... this age-22 old-timer does tend to ramble on.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Everyone who skipped work to play Diablo 2 has been fired. The firings will continue until office morale improves. If you skipped work today, don't bother going in tomorrow!! Homer: Woohoo! Four day weekend!
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Episode One was one of the corniest things I ever paid $8.50 twice for (the second showing was improved by the syphilitic in front of me whose rigid posture and eight inch afro obscured the occasional subtitles and most of the graphics). Episode Two doesn't even deserve to be seen; I'll watch it, maybe, if Lucas manages to get the word out that it is an apology for the first one. What was there to make Episode One tolerable? A few interesting aliens in the race scene and a well-choreographed swordfight towards the end (although the death of Darth Maul is not believable either). What made it insulting? Every thing else.
Well, perhaps it is unfair to use the term insulting? After all, it's not as if Lucas promised us anything... or did he? Probably not; it's simply aimed at a new generation of viewers (aka purchasers (mom, buy me Jar Jar!)). So those who enjoyed 4-6 should probably ignore 1-3 entirely. After twenty years of being a Star Wars fan (and not too much of an obsessive), I can finally terminate my relationship with Lucas. Just as so many Napster-and-Metallica fans have terminated their relationship with those shmucks. Episode One crossed a line and destroyed the nostalgic magic. So what else can I say about Episode Two? To paraphrase Jay Sherman, the Critic (on "English for Taxi Drivers"): "If the movie looks terrible, DON'T SEE IT!"
For the record I have not terminated my relationship with Chewbacca.
(Movies to pay good money for: Casablanca, Godfather II, the Blues Brothers, A Clockwork Orange, Animal House, Dr. Strangelove. "Empire" holds the distinction of being one of maybe 5 good sci-fi movies ever made, the others are Bladerunner, 2001, uhh... Heavy Metal??.)
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Interesting and on-topic post. If I may make one little suggestion for your future writings: Paragraphs.
If I may make one little suggestion for your future writings: shut the hell up. If you can't read a collection of sentences without pauses you're obviously not very bright! (For the record, I forgot to include HTML tags. You're still an idiot though.)
Now, 10% of autistic people have "Rainman" abilities - massive mathematical powers, etc., and apparentrly the current theory is that theses autistics are merely missing the final "step" in calculating things like humans do - the can't get that final estimate which allows us to get by in society easily.
I had no idea that autistics aren't humans!
Maybe that explains Ray Babbitt's fascination with Judge Wapner.
Imagine that... all of those biology/science teachers in grade school were actually teaching us smut! If only we'd known.
Actually maybe there is something to the Censorware results. After all a beaver is an animal which finds a straight, stiff object, puts part of it's mouth around it, and isn't content until it falls down.
We wouldn't want kids to learn to think metaphorically...
When Hitler was killing people left and right, he was doing his part for animal rights. The biggest threat to all other life is cancerous growth such as that of humans, generally at a far greater rate than other life on the planet (including animals and especially plants) and certainly out of proportion to the limited resources remaining (such as oil). From that perspective Hitler didn't do enough killing.
I'm not really one to jump on the Hitler bandwagon, being Jewish after all. But really, the reason animals have to be mistreated in factory farms is because there are so many gol'durned people. The wisest step toward environmental protection is a limit on reproduction. Which is not something you see a lot of people clamoring for, be they vegetarians, PETA-heads, or Nazi skinheads.
After doing a lot of research (just for curiosity) on Lexis-Nexis and so forth, I've come to the conclusion that any parody-related court decisions, are, in effect, arbitrary. It comes down to the mood of the judge and how they appreciate the humor involved. There are standards, but they're not clear-cut. I think there is a lot of room for comparison to the following court case synopsis I came across. It's also funny (although it helps if you can read Legalese). Affirming a judgment in favor of a small company that manufactured blue jeans especially designed for large women, and against a corporation that alleged infringement of its "Jordache" trademark, the court, in Jordache Enterprises, Inc. v Hogg Wyld, Ltd. (1987, CA10 NM) 828 F2d 1482, 4 USPQ2d 1216, 92 ALR Fed 1, held that there was no likelihood of confusion of the trademark with the small company's "Lardashe" jeans, where that company intended only to parody the corporation's mark. The corporation, the fourth largest blue jeans manufacturer in the United States, had as its principal product designer blue jeans bearing the trademark "Jordache" superimposed over a drawing of a horse's head. It licensed another company to manufacture and market "Jordache" jeans for larger women. The defendant, a small company formed for the purpose of marketing designer blue jeans for larger women, limited its sales to specialty shops in several southwestern states and to acquaintances of the owners or others who had heard of its product. The two women who had formed the company conducted the business out of their homes in New Mexico. The "Lardashe" trademark on their jeans was accompanied by a drawing of a pig's head. Finding that the two women did not intend to "palm off" their jeans as "Jordache" jeans or confuse members of the public to believe that they were buying "Jordache" products, the court observed that where a party chooses a mark as a parody of an existing mark, the intent is not necessarily to confuse the public, but rather to amuse. The purpose of a parody, noted the court, is to create a comic or satiric contrast to a serious work. While observing that, in one sense, a parody is an attempt to derive benefit from the reputation of the owner of a trademark (if only because no parody could be made without the initial mark), the court pointed out that the benefit to one making the parody, however, arises from the humorous association, not from public confusion as to the source of the marks. A parody, said the court, relies on the difference from the original mark, presumably a humorous difference, in order to produce the desired effect. The court remarked that the requirement of trademark law is that a likelihood of source, sponsorship, or affiliation must be proved and that this did not involve any "right" not to be made fun of. While it observed that a parody of an existing trademark can cause a likelihood of confusion under certain circumstances, the court stated that an intent to parody is not an intent to confuse the public. The court also held that because of the parody aspect of "Lardashe," it was not likely that public identification of the "Jordache" trademark with the corporation would be eroded. Parody, noted the court, tends to increase public identification of a plaintiff's mark with the plaintiff. While recognizing that "Lardashe" might be considered by some consumers to be in poor taste, the court reasoned that the mark was not likely to create in the minds of consumers a particularly unwholesome, unsavory, or degrading association with the corporation's name and trademark. The court found it unlikely that the public would assume that the same manufacturer would use quite different marks on substantially the same product.
If you're not allowed to make one on Earth, it's not really Pan-Galactic is it? I think the name should be changed to the Almost-Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Or maybe just a Flaming Moe. -Ben
Slashdot Mirror
...'cause it's "aught". Not "ought".
:)
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. --Gandhi
Wow, you really take your Gandhi seriously!!
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Man, what a jerk. Personally I liked having so much screen space on which I could click to visit "Teen Movie Critic" ! None of that carpal-tunnel-inducing careful movement of the pointer for me, no sirree bob! :)
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
The 00's are pronounced "the oughts". The great thing about that is that when we're all ancient fogies we'll be able to say "it was back in ought-one" like grizzled old gold prospectors, gol-durn-it!
Dag-nabbit!
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
It is a form of social transformation in that your physical being is not visible to others, only your mind. That, of course, has good points and bad points.
;) !
Most things can be done without ever actually seeing the other parties involved... but always remember that the best thing can't be done that way...
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Problem with an article like this is that it makes a huge set of generalizations... I think the reason Open Media is dominated by youth probably has as much to do with younger folks' higher learning curve, as it does with the fact they don't have the money to buy all the stuff they get for free. (Not to say that, at age 22, I've relinquished the piracy I was so gung ho about at 13.)
In any case it certainly suggests that by the time I'm 50 maybe something useful will happen in government and they'll stop dicking around worrying about drugs and communists! (I'll be throwing a party when Strom Thurmond and/or Jesse Helms finally shuffles off the mortal coil...)
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Thanks :)
The more I research this digital music controversy the more convinced I am that the record companies do nobody any good. They're just entrenched, and the government seeing eye-to-eye with them does the people no good at all. They need to question the original motives of the laws they're going so far to protect (i.e. Copyright). The labels are just spewing mediocrity and trying to prevent alternatives.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
The moderators are off their rocker!
:) . All I really wanted to do in my original post was keep Darwin's good name from being sullied in the name of social programs, a subject he never touched.
1) You CAN compare Darwin's logic to Hitler's. National Socialism (Nazism) was a form of Social Darwinism designed to improve society by eliminating a perceived problem: the Jews. When someone claims that you can improve society by getting rid of People X, how is that fundamentally different?
2) Of course I agree with sustainable development; actually, I'm in favor of negative population growth. My point was NOT to say that increased population growth is good for the species (did you even READ my post?) but to say that mankind's definitions of what is good for the species are arbitrary and therefore Social Darwinism or Eugenics or whatever fall short as a philosophical notion of government.
3) From where do people get this idea that electric cars are plugged in? My cousin actually wrote the book on Electric Cars. I know more about Electric Cars than I want to share. But the plug in thing is a total myth, perpetuated by ignorance... [OFF-TOPIC]
4) Socialism and Unions are not the same thing. I haven't been hanging around trade halls or whatever nonsense you're spouting. All I personally believe is that it is barbaric that government makes grand concessions toward gross polluters like GE yet refuses to pay enough to feed and re-educate a few homeless folks. If you have enough money you can move away from the pollution, otherwise you can sleep on the street. That's Social Darwinism at work in our current government.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to beg in the streets, steal for food, and sleep under bridges." -Anatole France (from memory).
5) I don't believe "working hard" is a fundamental human behavior. Your argument makes it seem as if all these grand accomplishments are really getting us toward some goal, but I'll be impressed if you can actually tell me what that goal is. All we're doing is puttering around and wasting time before death. (Not that I don't have a job; you'll probably say I'm a janitor, though actually I do research for an arch-capitalist newspaper.)
If you're going to try to define human nature ("the most basic factors of human behavior") you really need to to back it up with something besides rhetoric.
I'm not saying you should agree about the Socialism thing--you're welcome to act in your own self-interest or in self-sacrifice as you please--but I'm on top of the Darwin/Hitler thing, I guarantee
And for trying to save the legacy of one of Britain's finest minds, nobody offers *me* a permit to work in the EU... *sigh*
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
No, I fucked up :) People are stupid across all class lines. But often the poor are less well-educated. Cyclically the lack of money leads toward less educational resources, and the crummy education leads to lack of money; poor districts, such as Biloxi, Mississippi, also have less money to convert into taxes to support schools. So the casinos in Biloxi with equal access for rich and poor can't be doing too much good for the locals, jobs aside. And a rich man's dollar is a much smaller percentage of his treasury than a poor man's dollar.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Yes, that is precisely the logic Hitler used. The term for that is "eugenics"-- trying to cleanse the population of one or another form of apparent ill (in his case, Jews, in your case, the stupid). While it is true that smarter people tend to have smarter kids, there's no real proof that this is necessarily good for evolution under Darwin. For one thing, choosing population as a criteria for evolutionary success, it is not clear that intelligence is a good thing. Higher IQ people breed fewer children. (And our geniuses are bringing us much closer to armageddon than Forrest Gump ever would've.) By this criteria, intelligence is bad for the species.
My point is not to claim that population is a proper criteria for evolutionary success, but rather to point out that Darwin's model doesn't really prove anything about society. Attempts to justify "killing society's failures" through lack of compassion, based on Social Darwinist grounds, assume that whatever element those people have failed at (intelligence in this case) is relevant to the prolonging of the human species. Clearly it ISN'T. The actual attributes that make for a successful branch of offspring can't really be determined. If the human genome is diluted by hereditary stupidity, it doesn't seem to make any difference to Darwin. Ultimately "eugenics" can be reduced to a code word for scapegoating. Killing off all the idiots in the world won't make you more likely to get laid.
I agree that laws protecting stupid people have gotten out of hand. But I wouldn't go so far as to throw Darwin into the equation (and for the record there is a substantial difference between Darwinism and "Social Darwinism" as advocated by philosophers like Herbert Spencer). Darwinism has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with society; don't drag an innocent man's name into the mud.
I think there IS evidence that lousy treatment of society's more unfortunate people leads to crime. Atlantic City is full of same, although I think Las Vegas has been more effective at sweeping crime under the rug (ex post facto). As for those poor saps wasting their grocery money on lotteries, the essential fact is that they should be warned in advance that there is no way to win. This is a failure of public education--most people in our country can barely tell plus from minus. I don't think the lottery can really be justified until there is evidence that everyone can take care of their own finances responsibly. Yes, I'm a Socialist, is that so wrong? At least I'm not tacitly supporting Hitler.
Besides, how much fun is it to slowly pour your money down the drain, that you would let people go hungry for the right to do it? You can model blackjack as follows: randomly take a number between 1 and 100, and if it's below 48 you can double your investment, otherwise I get it. Watch as I become rich and you become poor and suddenly your politics change.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Look, the idea is that as citizens of a society need a government to protect us in certain ways and the support of the citizens legitimizes the government. Without a government, we could go around killing people, sure, but most people prefer the protection. That's the basic idea of democracy (although whether it works is another matter).
A more interesting system might involve the trading of freedoms for, say, fruit. As Richard Stallman has written, the record industry wants us to trade freedom (to copy digital files) for nothing! At least the government's protection racket has a sensible philosophical base, if not practice.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
The lottery/gambling is incredibly exploitative of the poor, who can't afford it as much and are more subject to the myth that you can make money gambling. Online Gambling is much more socially justifiable when you consider that poor folks generally ain't on the Internet. If they're going to outlaw something, they should outlaw gambling as a business!
(I especially hate slot machines.)
(I feel like I'm just rehashing my comments from the online voting section, but I apologize. I just get mad hearing about how many hicks have been bankrupted by video poker machines in convenience stores in South Carolina, etc. etc. etc.)
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
The Real Problem with online voting is not that it provides for the likelihood of hackers. I think a reasonable system can be implemented ultimately, and it's not as if physical voting fraud has been entirely eliminated. Never mind all that.
The Real Problem is the literacy test issue, which still haunts most of the country despite having been outlawed during the Reconstruction. It was once necessary for voters in some Southern states to pass a literacy test before voting, meaning that uneducated ex-slaves would be effectively unable to contribute to the democratic process despite the Constitution's 14th Amendment. Now online voting presents the opportunity for a new computer literacy test--if you've ever watched over the shoulder of a first-time Internet user at a public library, you'd probably see a frustrated person with little comprehension of what's going on. Computers aren't obvious, at least to most of the population! The "digital divide" really exist--I don't know figures off-hand, but essentially a lot of poor folks don't have computers, much less training or Internet access. This means that online voting, for the time being, poses a serious threat to democracy.
Republicans should be going nuts in favor of online voting and the elimination of any other means (although that probably won't happen). Luckily for them, most people wouldn't vote either way so maybe it won't make a difference.
Admittedly counteracting the poverty issue is the issue that elderly folks can't use computers either. They're more likely to vote conservative (by accident if not by choice (ask my Grandma)), so Republicans may pay as well for the conversion, should one ever occur. However online voting is fundamentally ideal for the elderly--not having to leave the house--and could be established in retirement homes.
Even though online voting does NOT mean the end of physical voting, surely the switch would change priorities, perhaps shrinking the number of physical polling places. I'm a big proponent of online voting, but it should not be established countrywide until it can be demonstrated that equal access is ensured. Democracy is only real when everyone has a voice.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Does anybody remember Wasteland? You're probably all too young to remember what is STILL one of the best RPGs ever written (and also credited with the introduction of NPC's). Not exactly a linear story, but rudimentary sprite-based graphics... The point is, graphics ain't shite. Nethack is better than 99% of the crap they've been spewing the last few years.
Also, along the same lines, Britney Spears sucks. You might hear me go "wooo!" with my bare midriff shakin' at the Blood, Sweat & Tears concert though...
Oops... I seem to have talked at more length than I intended... this age-22 old-timer does tend to ramble on.
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
I'm not getting Diablo 2 until they make it for my Palm III!
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Everyone who skipped work to play Diablo 2 has been fired. The firings will continue until office morale improves. If you skipped work today, don't bother going in tomorrow!!
Homer: Woohoo! Four day weekend!
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Episode One was one of the corniest things I ever paid $8.50 twice for (the second showing was improved by the syphilitic in front of me whose rigid posture and eight inch afro obscured the occasional subtitles and most of the graphics). Episode Two doesn't even deserve to be seen; I'll watch it, maybe, if Lucas manages to get the word out that it is an apology for the first one. What was there to make Episode One tolerable? A few interesting aliens in the race scene and a well-choreographed swordfight towards the end (although the death of Darth Maul is not believable either). What made it insulting? Every thing else.
Well, perhaps it is unfair to use the term insulting? After all, it's not as if Lucas promised us anything... or did he? Probably not; it's simply aimed at a new generation of viewers (aka purchasers (mom, buy me Jar Jar!)). So those who enjoyed 4-6 should probably ignore 1-3 entirely. After twenty years of being a Star Wars fan (and not too much of an obsessive), I can finally terminate my relationship with Lucas. Just as so many Napster-and-Metallica fans have terminated their relationship with those shmucks. Episode One crossed a line and destroyed the nostalgic magic. So what else can I say about Episode Two? To paraphrase Jay Sherman, the Critic (on "English for Taxi Drivers"): "If the movie looks terrible, DON'T SEE IT!"
For the record I have not terminated my relationship with Chewbacca.
(Movies to pay good money for: Casablanca, Godfather II, the Blues Brothers, A Clockwork Orange, Animal House, Dr. Strangelove. "Empire" holds the distinction of being one of maybe 5 good sci-fi movies ever made, the others are Bladerunner, 2001, uhh... Heavy Metal??.)
Ben Chadwick - Editor, Zero Future/Post-Collegiate Malaise
Interesting and on-topic post. If I may make one little suggestion for your future writings: Paragraphs.
If I may make one little suggestion for your future writings: shut the hell up. If you can't read a collection of sentences without pauses you're obviously not very bright! (For the record, I forgot to include HTML tags. You're still an idiot though.)
Now, 10% of autistic people have "Rainman" abilities - massive mathematical powers, etc., and apparentrly the current theory is that theses autistics are merely missing the final "step" in calculating things like humans do - the can't get that final estimate which allows us to get by in society easily.
I had no idea that autistics aren't humans!
Maybe that explains Ray Babbitt's fascination with Judge Wapner.
Gotta fly Qantas.
Imagine that... all of those biology/science teachers in grade school were actually teaching us smut! If only we'd known.
Actually maybe there is something to the Censorware results. After all a beaver is an animal which finds a straight, stiff object, puts part of it's mouth around it, and isn't content until it falls down.
We wouldn't want kids to learn to think metaphorically...
When Hitler was killing people left and right, he was doing his part for animal rights. The biggest threat to all other life is cancerous growth such as that of humans, generally at a far greater rate than other life on the planet (including animals and especially plants) and certainly out of proportion to the limited resources remaining (such as oil). From that perspective Hitler didn't do enough killing.
I'm not really one to jump on the Hitler bandwagon, being Jewish after all. But really, the reason animals have to be mistreated in factory farms is because there are so many gol'durned people. The wisest step toward environmental protection is a limit on reproduction. Which is not something you see a lot of people clamoring for, be they vegetarians, PETA-heads, or Nazi skinheads.
After doing a lot of research (just for curiosity) on Lexis-Nexis and so forth, I've come to the conclusion that any parody-related court decisions, are, in effect, arbitrary. It comes down to the mood of the judge and how they appreciate the humor involved. There are standards, but they're not clear-cut. I think there is a lot of room for comparison to the following court case synopsis I came across. It's also funny (although it helps if you can read Legalese). Affirming a judgment in favor of a small company that manufactured blue jeans especially designed for large women, and against a corporation that alleged infringement of its "Jordache" trademark, the court, in Jordache Enterprises, Inc. v Hogg Wyld, Ltd. (1987, CA10 NM) 828 F2d 1482, 4 USPQ2d 1216, 92 ALR Fed 1, held that there was no likelihood of confusion of the trademark with the small company's "Lardashe" jeans, where that company intended only to parody the corporation's mark. The corporation, the fourth largest blue jeans manufacturer in the United States, had as its principal product designer blue jeans bearing the trademark "Jordache" superimposed over a drawing of a horse's head. It licensed another company to manufacture and market "Jordache" jeans for larger women. The defendant, a small company formed for the purpose of marketing designer blue jeans for larger women, limited its sales to specialty shops in several southwestern states and to acquaintances of the owners or others who had heard of its product. The two women who had formed the company conducted the business out of their homes in New Mexico. The "Lardashe" trademark on their jeans was accompanied by a drawing of a pig's head. Finding that the two women did not intend to "palm off" their jeans as "Jordache" jeans or confuse members of the public to believe that they were buying "Jordache" products, the court observed that where a party chooses a mark as a parody of an existing mark, the intent is not necessarily to confuse the public, but rather to amuse. The purpose of a parody, noted the court, is to create a comic or satiric contrast to a serious work. While observing that, in one sense, a parody is an attempt to derive benefit from the reputation of the owner of a trademark (if only because no parody could be made without the initial mark), the court pointed out that the benefit to one making the parody, however, arises from the humorous association, not from public confusion as to the source of the marks. A parody, said the court, relies on the difference from the original mark, presumably a humorous difference, in order to produce the desired effect. The court remarked that the requirement of trademark law is that a likelihood of source, sponsorship, or affiliation must be proved and that this did not involve any "right" not to be made fun of. While it observed that a parody of an existing trademark can cause a likelihood of confusion under certain circumstances, the court stated that an intent to parody is not an intent to confuse the public. The court also held that because of the parody aspect of "Lardashe," it was not likely that public identification of the "Jordache" trademark with the corporation would be eroded. Parody, noted the court, tends to increase public identification of a plaintiff's mark with the plaintiff. While recognizing that "Lardashe" might be considered by some consumers to be in poor taste, the court reasoned that the mark was not likely to create in the minds of consumers a particularly unwholesome, unsavory, or degrading association with the corporation's name and trademark. The court found it unlikely that the public would assume that the same manufacturer would use quite different marks on substantially the same product.
If you're not allowed to make one on Earth, it's not really Pan-Galactic is it? I think the name should be changed to the Almost-Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Or maybe just a Flaming Moe. -Ben