One of every four rapes take place in a public area or in a parking garage.
These bastions of IT have parking, right?
I'm not even saying it's likely to happen. But women grow up having to think about this. Having a crowd of columbine near-misses act like sex starved adolescents doesn't exactly inspire feelings of security.
Right, go ahead and whip out those statistics that show how common that is. That's a *very* reasonable arguement. I know, as a man, I worry about that all the time, because I know all kinds of guys that have been raped by women, and I fear I might be next! I'm so glad I'm not alone there./sarcasm.
Especially with something like rape, the male equivalent is more like everywhere you go, groups of people are eying your wallet, and contemplating jumping you for it. The vast majority of people would never do it... but some would, and *everyone* is looking.
I'm not saying all women live in quaking fear whenever they are around men. I am simply saying when we, as men, demonstrate that we are capable of objectifying a woman by staring at her body with obviously sexual thoughts on our mind, it isn't exactly a leap for a woman to feel threatened by that, because sexual violence is pretty common. She would be an idiot to ignore it.
Men don't have to consider the possibility that they may actually get cornered in an office late at night by a woman capable of raping them, either.
There are differences. Men are built to take what we want. The better of us don't do it. But every woman knows someone, if they have not themselves, been victimized physically by a man. Period.
Everyone staring at a woman is not just childish.. it's threatening, in a very real sense. Just because we haven't been trained as men not to do it doesn't make it ok.
Actually, I've met several bands that create professional sounding recordings for very little money with just microphones and a PC. The barrier to entry to RECORDING music is also trivially small now. You don't need a $100k studio to record and mix an album of very acceptable quality, even though the studios might like to think that's still true. Granted, production value is higher, but it's not like the old 8 track recorder days my friend... you're dating yourself if you think it is. I remember those days, when I was in a band. The game has changed.
Huge, mega rich musicians may dissapear. Musicians that fit a handy marketing schema may not get huge hand outs to record a crappy album. But music survived long before recorded music was even a possibility, and it will continue to survive into the future.
That's simple. reproducing recorded copies of anything is trivially cheap and easy. There is practically no barrier to entry to do it, and practically no cost to it as well. Therefor, it is worthless; there is no added value to copying a recording.
You can't reproduce a concert experience. You may not LIKE concert experiences, in which case, the artists change the experience or people stop coming (or, you're a small enough minority that they can't cater to you). But it is not reproducable. It is a unique experience, with a high amount of added cost associated with putting on the show.
You can say that it's inefficient, perhaps; you get more enjoyment from the recording than from the concert. But then again, it's not your enjoyment you're buying, you enjoy the product you are purchasing, but the product you are purchasing is not "enjoyment"... it's a widget, either a worthless one due to ridiculous ease of reproduction or a unique that you may or may not enjoy as much.
So if you never go to concerts, the artists don't get paid in a model that doesn't depend on artificially maintaining a price on a product with no inherent value. Then, the artists either need to charge less for the concerts, or change the experience so that people like you enjoy it, or ignore you because you're some fringe minority (and hopefully, some bands will cater to your needs who are willing to make less money or settle for less mass appeal).
Do whatever you like. But the heap of bits on a plastic disk you are purchasing has no value. It's not insane to say that. Only the original has any barrier to entry, and that's fairly minimal to anyone equipped to play music these days. Trying to keep CDs valuable is simply a stopgap measure until the market is forced to adapt to the new realities of life in the digital age.
Perhaps. That's just a UI problem though, which puts us in the position of basically engineering our own functional evolution...
the issue is our current "hardware" is "fuzzy". it's not solid, binary, like silicon.
What if we make our memory solid.. no misremembering. No forgotten detail unless it's just not important enough to recollect (with the barrier to that dropping as UIs improve, making it easier and easier to recollect anything). What impact would *just that* have? How many times have you been really invested in an idea that ended up being based on something you remembered wrong?
I think the ramifications and implications of the "I can record my entire life on a wearable device" alone makes for a major revolution. You never have to forget ANYTHING, EVER AGAIN.
Combined with wireless internet, and you are also a one person, non stop, possible reporter, eye on the scene.
But that's just it: it's NOT rational. They THINK a heavy car is safer, and it's just not true. It might be safer in one case... a certain type of collision... but as the data shows, you are less likely to die in a car if you drive a full or mid size car than if you drive an SUV. Even better if you drive a minivan, or a full size van (though then we are back to a heavier car).
Compact cars are actually less safe than SUBcompact cars.
So it's not rational self interest, it's perceived safety based on a limited perception OF safety. The data disagrees.
Those other plants are not currently illegal for no good reason.
Right? Or did I miss a memo?
Is it possible that hemp advocates think it's ridiculous that we are not allowed to use a very useful crop for no reason? You can't get high from it. Why is it illegal?
Of course, you're also much more likely to kill the person you hit, but hey, don't let that bother you any, we don't mind. You do what you have to in order to be safe.
Me, I'm going to put a tank gun on my car, and if anyone gets too close, POW!!! Better safe than sorry, right?
How about covering up decades of child abuse to protect the institution?
Justifying war and the murder of millions? How does that stack up?
Different, yes. Not *quite* as different as mainstream believers might wish, though. I mean, organized religion has thousands of years of history of extortion, exploitation, war and other unsavory actions associated with it. By comparison, Scientology is a bunch of two-bit amateurs.
would not be considered such by who? by egalitarian pseudo-democratic idealists, sure. But history has a long history of plutocracy! And modern conservatives often don't try very hard to hide that basis of their own bias... money is free speech, remember?
I'll concede I have no idea of the history of libertarian thought.. I've only been involved with the modern counterparts.
I also make a habit of ignoring "founding fathers", since many of them had diametrically opposed ideals, it's hard to address them as a unified group;)
Actually, your flip "simply because its officials are unelected" isn't really true. The type of libertarian you refer to would say that all businesses/organizations in a free market are elected, directly, when you choose to give them your money in return for whatever it is that they promise to do for you.
Now.. don't get me wrong.. I don't agree with that. But a fundamental libertarian premise is that the free market is a robust construction most able to deal with shifting needs of a society, while government is simply hierarchy that can defend its own interests even when those interests are against those of the overall market.
That is, business is overthrown when you stop paying them. Government... well, it can take a good bit more than that.
I think the solution, personally, is to improve governmental constructs then, which is why I am not a libertarian anymore.
Frankly, I don't know anything about it. You may be right... I only know what I have seen the Dalai Lama say, which mostly is pretty impressive stuff, philosophically speaking, whether he himself abided by the ideals or not.
I was only saying that a country run on the ideals... not necessarily tibet, as I said... would perhaps appear destitute by our standards, but that would not mean that they were inferior. Perhaps I got the insinuation in the prior post wrong, but it sounded like poverty was a reason for dismissing tibet, and I was reacting to that.
Bhuddism as an organized religion is just as corrupt as any other, no doubt. Funny they all say basically the same thing when you get to the core, and they all get perverted in similar ways if that is allowed. It's unfortunate, since most people don't have much other occasion to explore the existential nature of their lives except through religion...
anyway, if I was less than precise (or completely fucked) in my last post, I apologize.
I'm with you on most westerns groping for something a bit more substantial than they see in their daily lives. And while I am sympathetic to bhuddist philosophy (much as I am sympathetic to christian, jewish, taoist, and hindu philosophy when you boil them all down), I am not bhuddist nor do I think the Dalai Lama is a god.
He is, however, a seriously insightful fellow who spends his life on philosophical pursuits and who has an awful lot of good to say and pass on. He's not infallible, but he knows a few things about peace, joy, and living with love that most of us could benefit from listening to.
Part of where you're going off though is that you are failing to recognize that a basic tenet of MOST forms of mysticism involve ignoring the material world to a very large degree. Vows of poverty and such are commonplace, and you don't find many seriously spiritual people distracting themselves with riches, toys, etc. Most live very austere existences, because the rest of the material crap, while fun and maybe useful, pales in comparison for them. Being able to go down to a gigantic hospital in a helicopter is nice. Nicer, is to live healthy and well and peacefully so you don't need to. And if tragedy strikes, handling it with equitable grace is nice too.
So if you ran a country like that.. yes, it would be poor. OF course it would. Tibet may not be the example everyone wants, but the example of a country run according to peaceful, enlightened ideals would be unlikely to be terribly advanced technologically, because to push technology the way we do, you have to live way, way out of balance. But, that would be ok. It might progress, but technological progress would not be the God of the society as it is here.
I love tech, don't get me wrong. I just don't pretend that our society promotes healthy psyches because we happened to be productive. Robots can be productive too, but I don't want to live like one.
If that's your standard of a free market, with welfare, medical support, support for infrastructure and public developement, public research and developement, environmental regulation, and more... then fine, yes, "free markets" are very stable. You might want to modify your term though, as the real free marketeers would probably take issue with your characterization.
Wow. so because YOU like vapid movies, no one should be able to make movies that deal with real life issues?
That's funny. You consider the "Hollywood-ization" factor to be too much focus on reality, and I consider it exactly the opposite, it deals way too much with empty calories for the brain, with brainless entertainment like Cops, "Reality" shows, watered down newscasts, hits to the gonads, sports, and other forms of "entertainment" suitable for neanderthals and mouth-breathers everywhere.
I'd be ecstatic if Hollywood spent more time telling stories about issues and topics relevant to living life. They are the storytellers of our generation, after all, and like it or not, story telling is more than entertainment. At least, it has always historically been about more than just entertainment. Witness parables, great literature, oral histories... if they were "just stories", we'd all be a lot poorer.
I see no reason why games should be any different. I'd love to have a "documentary" game to try out. Or more games with plots that are actually interesting, instead of just ways to deliver a game avatar from one hack and slash to the next. Really, the line between games and movies could be more of a continuum, with "interactive media" in the middle.
But nah, you're right. Let's just crank out "Cops: the Videogame" with plenty of half naked, drunk sorority girls in them. Now THAT'S entertainment.
That's clear the moment you say "hey, want to play in my D and D game?".
It says in every edition that the GM's word is law, and that all rules may be modified, ignored, changed, or added to at the the GM's whims at any time, for any reason. That's why you have a GM, instead of a computer, running the game.
They can, but it's not called a "Roll" playing game for a reason. The GM has to make decisions that keep the game going. He or she is the lynchpin that keeps things happening.
There is no such thing as a "freeform" game without heavy GM creativity in spite of dice rolls. You simply cannot script, randomize, and tabulate every possibility that players will come up with, or results that might occur while travelling. Nor can the game be fresh and spontaneous at all if you are chained to the dice. I GMed personally for a good 6 years, in a world entirely of my own creation, and even I would have to spend up to 40 hours prepping a good adventure session, because you can't plan everything.
What if the players go left instead of right at the fork in the road? Hey, the GM didn't invest hours learning about every area the players might ever decide to walk/fly/teleport to. So what to do? Grind the game to a halt while the GM reads a sourcebook? Make something up (say, a "push" encounter that shoves them a certain way? Or move the town they were going to adventure in?
What if they get a little ways into the adventure and you realize that your plan didn't account for that new power the paladin got, and they are walking through the encounters on cruise control?
The point of role playing games is not some objective measure of your character's power. It's a game of interactive storytelling with aids to help settle disputes and to provide some structure. Either you trust your GM to be a good GM to do what's best for the group to keep it FUN (so players keep playing) or you don't. That means sometimes letting the characters succeed wildly and sometimes letting them fail miserably, but ultimately it means keeping the game moving, above all else.
I've played a lot of D and D in my time, and I've played with GMs who didn't use paper and dice at all, and those who came from wargaming backgrounds that treated the roleplaying as a vehicle for delivering us to battlegrounds. The non Paper and dice games were much more enjoyable, even though I am personally also a wargamer and I like tactical combat, that's not why I play D and D. That's what Tank Leader and such is for. That's where everything needs to be objective, because it's COMPETITIVE.
In D and D, you are not competing against the GM, unless one or both of you are an asshole.
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One of every four rapes take place in a public area or in a parking garage.
These bastions of IT have parking, right?
I'm not even saying it's likely to happen. But women grow up having to think about this. Having a crowd of columbine near-misses act like sex starved adolescents doesn't exactly inspire feelings of security.
Right, go ahead and whip out those statistics that show how common that is. That's a *very* reasonable arguement. I know, as a man, I worry about that all the time, because I know all kinds of guys that have been raped by women, and I fear I might be next! I'm so glad I'm not alone there. /sarcasm.
Especially with something like rape, the male equivalent is more like everywhere you go, groups of people are eying your wallet, and contemplating jumping you for it. The vast majority of people would never do it... but some would, and *everyone* is looking.
I'm not saying all women live in quaking fear whenever they are around men. I am simply saying when we, as men, demonstrate that we are capable of objectifying a woman by staring at her body with obviously sexual thoughts on our mind, it isn't exactly a leap for a woman to feel threatened by that, because sexual violence is pretty common. She would be an idiot to ignore it.
Men don't have to consider the possibility that they may actually get cornered in an office late at night by a woman capable of raping them, either.
There are differences. Men are built to take what we want. The better of us don't do it. But every woman knows someone, if they have not themselves, been victimized physically by a man. Period.
Everyone staring at a woman is not just childish.. it's threatening, in a very real sense. Just because we haven't been trained as men not to do it doesn't make it ok.
Legalize drugs and they are out of business overnight.
Actually, I've met several bands that create professional sounding recordings for very little money with just microphones and a PC. The barrier to entry to RECORDING music is also trivially small now. You don't need a $100k studio to record and mix an album of very acceptable quality, even though the studios might like to think that's still true. Granted, production value is higher, but it's not like the old 8 track recorder days my friend... you're dating yourself if you think it is. I remember those days, when I was in a band. The game has changed.
Huge, mega rich musicians may dissapear. Musicians that fit a handy marketing schema may not get huge hand outs to record a crappy album. But music survived long before recorded music was even a possibility, and it will continue to survive into the future.
That's simple. reproducing recorded copies of anything is trivially cheap and easy. There is practically no barrier to entry to do it, and practically no cost to it as well. Therefor, it is worthless; there is no added value to copying a recording.
You can't reproduce a concert experience. You may not LIKE concert experiences, in which case, the artists change the experience or people stop coming (or, you're a small enough minority that they can't cater to you). But it is not reproducable. It is a unique experience, with a high amount of added cost associated with putting on the show.
You can say that it's inefficient, perhaps; you get more enjoyment from the recording than from the concert. But then again, it's not your enjoyment you're buying, you enjoy the product you are purchasing, but the product you are purchasing is not "enjoyment"... it's a widget, either a worthless one due to ridiculous ease of reproduction or a unique that you may or may not enjoy as much.
So if you never go to concerts, the artists don't get paid in a model that doesn't depend on artificially maintaining a price on a product with no inherent value. Then, the artists either need to charge less for the concerts, or change the experience so that people like you enjoy it, or ignore you because you're some fringe minority (and hopefully, some bands will cater to your needs who are willing to make less money or settle for less mass appeal).
Do whatever you like. But the heap of bits on a plastic disk you are purchasing has no value. It's not insane to say that. Only the original has any barrier to entry, and that's fairly minimal to anyone equipped to play music these days. Trying to keep CDs valuable is simply a stopgap measure until the market is forced to adapt to the new realities of life in the digital age.
Perhaps. That's just a UI problem though, which puts us in the position of basically engineering our own functional evolution...
the issue is our current "hardware" is "fuzzy". it's not solid, binary, like silicon.
What if we make our memory solid.. no misremembering. No forgotten detail unless it's just not important enough to recollect (with the barrier to that dropping as UIs improve, making it easier and easier to recollect anything). What impact would *just that* have? How many times have you been really invested in an idea that ended up being based on something you remembered wrong?
I think the ramifications and implications of the "I can record my entire life on a wearable device" alone makes for a major revolution. You never have to forget ANYTHING, EVER AGAIN.
Combined with wireless internet, and you are also a one person, non stop, possible reporter, eye on the scene.
How far from there to Hive Mind?
But that's just it: it's NOT rational. They THINK a heavy car is safer, and it's just not true. It might be safer in one case... a certain type of collision... but as the data shows, you are less likely to die in a car if you drive a full or mid size car than if you drive an SUV. Even better if you drive a minivan, or a full size van (though then we are back to a heavier car).
Compact cars are actually less safe than SUBcompact cars.
So it's not rational self interest, it's perceived safety based on a limited perception OF safety. The data disagrees.
Small sticks? String grids? Just has to be something you can process right along with the plant material.
Those other plants are not currently illegal for no good reason.
Right? Or did I miss a memo?
Is it possible that hemp advocates think it's ridiculous that we are not allowed to use a very useful crop for no reason? You can't get high from it. Why is it illegal?
as long as you're the one behind the wheel, that's true compared to SOME other cars (here's the actual data: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/RNote s/2006/809979.pdf where you might find some surprises, such as the mid size car being safer than an SUV).
Of course, you're also much more likely to kill the person you hit, but hey, don't let that bother you any, we don't mind. You do what you have to in order to be safe.
Me, I'm going to put a tank gun on my car, and if anyone gets too close, POW!!! Better safe than sorry, right?
Tithing?
How about covering up decades of child abuse to protect the institution?
Justifying war and the murder of millions? How does that stack up?
Different, yes. Not *quite* as different as mainstream believers might wish, though. I mean, organized religion has thousands of years of history of extortion, exploitation, war and other unsavory actions associated with it. By comparison, Scientology is a bunch of two-bit amateurs.
well, if a previous poster is to be believed, the innovation wouldn't even exist if it were not for "stupid legal action".
would not be considered such by who? by egalitarian pseudo-democratic idealists, sure. But history has a long history of plutocracy! And modern conservatives often don't try very hard to hide that basis of their own bias... money is free speech, remember?
;)
I'll concede I have no idea of the history of libertarian thought.. I've only been involved with the modern counterparts.
I also make a habit of ignoring "founding fathers", since many of them had diametrically opposed ideals, it's hard to address them as a unified group
Actually, your flip "simply because its officials are unelected" isn't really true. The type of libertarian you refer to would say that all businesses/organizations in a free market are elected, directly, when you choose to give them your money in return for whatever it is that they promise to do for you.
Now.. don't get me wrong.. I don't agree with that. But a fundamental libertarian premise is that the free market is a robust construction most able to deal with shifting needs of a society, while government is simply hierarchy that can defend its own interests even when those interests are against those of the overall market.
That is, business is overthrown when you stop paying them. Government... well, it can take a good bit more than that.
I think the solution, personally, is to improve governmental constructs then, which is why I am not a libertarian anymore.
If you can't fight this because it is inconvenient to do so... you'd be willing to fight something that has real consequences?
Here, it's "you're right and it's a small PITA".
Later, it's "You're right and rotting in prison without charges" or other similarly distasteful consequences.
When would YOU rather stand up?
Frankly, I don't know anything about it. You may be right... I only know what I have seen the Dalai Lama say, which mostly is pretty impressive stuff, philosophically speaking, whether he himself abided by the ideals or not.
I was only saying that a country run on the ideals... not necessarily tibet, as I said... would perhaps appear destitute by our standards, but that would not mean that they were inferior. Perhaps I got the insinuation in the prior post wrong, but it sounded like poverty was a reason for dismissing tibet, and I was reacting to that.
Bhuddism as an organized religion is just as corrupt as any other, no doubt. Funny they all say basically the same thing when you get to the core, and they all get perverted in similar ways if that is allowed. It's unfortunate, since most people don't have much other occasion to explore the existential nature of their lives except through religion...
anyway, if I was less than precise (or completely fucked) in my last post, I apologize.
I'm with you on most westerns groping for something a bit more substantial than they see in their daily lives. And while I am sympathetic to bhuddist philosophy (much as I am sympathetic to christian, jewish, taoist, and hindu philosophy when you boil them all down), I am not bhuddist nor do I think the Dalai Lama is a god.
He is, however, a seriously insightful fellow who spends his life on philosophical pursuits and who has an awful lot of good to say and pass on. He's not infallible, but he knows a few things about peace, joy, and living with love that most of us could benefit from listening to.
Part of where you're going off though is that you are failing to recognize that a basic tenet of MOST forms of mysticism involve ignoring the material world to a very large degree. Vows of poverty and such are commonplace, and you don't find many seriously spiritual people distracting themselves with riches, toys, etc. Most live very austere existences, because the rest of the material crap, while fun and maybe useful, pales in comparison for them. Being able to go down to a gigantic hospital in a helicopter is nice. Nicer, is to live healthy and well and peacefully so you don't need to. And if tragedy strikes, handling it with equitable grace is nice too.
So if you ran a country like that.. yes, it would be poor. OF course it would. Tibet may not be the example everyone wants, but the example of a country run according to peaceful, enlightened ideals would be unlikely to be terribly advanced technologically, because to push technology the way we do, you have to live way, way out of balance. But, that would be ok. It might progress, but technological progress would not be the God of the society as it is here.
I love tech, don't get me wrong. I just don't pretend that our society promotes healthy psyches because we happened to be productive. Robots can be productive too, but I don't want to live like one.
If that's your standard of a free market, with welfare, medical support, support for infrastructure and public developement, public research and developement, environmental regulation, and more... then fine, yes, "free markets" are very stable. You might want to modify your term though, as the real free marketeers would probably take issue with your characterization.
When has their ever been a free market society, other than in anarchies?
Wow. so because YOU like vapid movies, no one should be able to make movies that deal with real life issues?
That's funny. You consider the "Hollywood-ization" factor to be too much focus on reality, and I consider it exactly the opposite, it deals way too much with empty calories for the brain, with brainless entertainment like Cops, "Reality" shows, watered down newscasts, hits to the gonads, sports, and other forms of "entertainment" suitable for neanderthals and mouth-breathers everywhere.
I'd be ecstatic if Hollywood spent more time telling stories about issues and topics relevant to living life. They are the storytellers of our generation, after all, and like it or not, story telling is more than entertainment. At least, it has always historically been about more than just entertainment. Witness parables, great literature, oral histories... if they were "just stories", we'd all be a lot poorer.
I see no reason why games should be any different. I'd love to have a "documentary" game to try out. Or more games with plots that are actually interesting, instead of just ways to deliver a game avatar from one hack and slash to the next. Really, the line between games and movies could be more of a continuum, with "interactive media" in the middle.
But nah, you're right. Let's just crank out "Cops: the Videogame" with plenty of half naked, drunk sorority girls in them. Now THAT'S entertainment.
Have they? Where is this proof?
That's clear the moment you say "hey, want to play in my D and D game?".
It says in every edition that the GM's word is law, and that all rules may be modified, ignored, changed, or added to at the the GM's whims at any time, for any reason. That's why you have a GM, instead of a computer, running the game.
They can, but it's not called a "Roll" playing game for a reason. The GM has to make decisions that keep the game going. He or she is the lynchpin that keeps things happening.
There is no such thing as a "freeform" game without heavy GM creativity in spite of dice rolls. You simply cannot script, randomize, and tabulate every possibility that players will come up with, or results that might occur while travelling. Nor can the game be fresh and spontaneous at all if you are chained to the dice. I GMed personally for a good 6 years, in a world entirely of my own creation, and even I would have to spend up to 40 hours prepping a good adventure session, because you can't plan everything.
What if the players go left instead of right at the fork in the road? Hey, the GM didn't invest hours learning about every area the players might ever decide to walk/fly/teleport to. So what to do? Grind the game to a halt while the GM reads a sourcebook? Make something up (say, a "push" encounter that shoves them a certain way? Or move the town they were going to adventure in?
What if they get a little ways into the adventure and you realize that your plan didn't account for that new power the paladin got, and they are walking through the encounters on cruise control?
The point of role playing games is not some objective measure of your character's power. It's a game of interactive storytelling with aids to help settle disputes and to provide some structure. Either you trust your GM to be a good GM to do what's best for the group to keep it FUN (so players keep playing) or you don't. That means sometimes letting the characters succeed wildly and sometimes letting them fail miserably, but ultimately it means keeping the game moving, above all else.
I've played a lot of D and D in my time, and I've played with GMs who didn't use paper and dice at all, and those who came from wargaming backgrounds that treated the roleplaying as a vehicle for delivering us to battlegrounds. The non Paper and dice games were much more enjoyable, even though I am personally also a wargamer and I like tactical combat, that's not why I play D and D. That's what Tank Leader and such is for. That's where everything needs to be objective, because it's COMPETITIVE.
In D and D, you are not competing against the GM, unless one or both of you are an asshole.