Well look at education spending. With the space race and the money that went into education, you built a generation of engineers and scientists who dreamed of one day emmigrating to the lunar colonies where they went to their space job and came home to Daryl Hanna until she flipped out and killed them. Now their looking at that nice retirement property next to the golf course.
Engineering and teaching aren't respected. They're lip serviced. What's respected stealing a lot of money from a lot of people and lying to congress about it (only a little). Or being famous. But Ketchup is officially a vegitable now. But I bet there might be more people going into applied math. They might have been overlooked, but they certainly should be lumped in with the rest of the geeks.
Impessive numbers. Now when I go on the Fox News Channel I can definitively announce that within 4 years we'll all have gravitic tidal generators powering our self-sizing, heated, electro-optic camoflauge pants. (Or am I the only one who remembers their guest technology analyst saying that we'd all have zero point energy within 5 years?)
was texturing and lighting. I got truespace to play around with, and found that given an object and calipers, it was realitivly trivial to make the model. But I stuggled mightily to get something that would look halfway decent when rendered. It ended up being something that I wasn't able to intuit by myself. Ultimately my limited experience has been making something is 5% modeling, 35% texturing, and 60% lighting.
A book I found that helped my somewhat was The Art of 3-D Computer Animation and Imaging by Isaac Victor Kerlow, ISBN 0-471-28649-4. The short review was that it's a pretty complete overview, if a little dated (it was published in '96) but it has plenty of examples, and while it is layed out like a text book it is a very easy read. While my ability to texture and light stuff did improve to the point where you could tell what I rendered and what I was going for, it's still pretty lacking. It's just not an area I have a great deal of talent, which of course shouldn't reflect on the book.
At least I'm not alone. Judging from all the cg in movies where the lighting doesn't match that of the scene, it's probably one of the most difficult elements to master.
Don't forget about how the authorities had a press conference about his large porno collection. Just what every guy needs, save a few lives at your minimum wage job only the FBI make sure your porno collection makes weekend update on SNL.
What do you want to bet next time he sees a suspicious package he just quietly turns around and walks away.
Unlike the FBI at least SNL eventually tried to make amends.
If you claimed to have found an unlimited energy source and your only proof was a video tape, and no one has since been able to duplicate your experiment in a lab, everyone would say its a hoax, including NASA.
Dear Mr. Pons,
Please, give it up. You're an idiot. The university that issues degrees, let alone doctorates, in chemistry to people who are unable to understand both convection and electrolysis should probably issue a recall.
The fact that you have an opinion says nothing about the merit of that opinion. Despite what the sophists will tell you, there is an objective truth. Should your flighty ideas contradict the vast preponderance of the evidence, the burden of proof is on you, the person making outrageous claims.
It's the great failing of our culture that our egalitarian leanings take the form that ideas put forth are deserving of equally little skepticism. But while you are a kook, you're not really the problem. It all boils down to popularity being more important than what one knows and what one can do. That blame lies squarely with the public at large.
I have a promotional vinyl copy of Tommy Shaw's Girls With Guns. A catchy and pretty ammusing song. I didn't have a car stereo that did tape, so I asked a guy who had it on one of his play lists to send it to me. I had a copy I was free to duplicate, someone saved me the huge pain in the ass of doing so.
One of the few songs I've gotten off the internet, the others are from bands like The Minibosses, They Might Be Giants, Daft Punk et al that offer songs for download.
Interestingly enough my introduction to TMBG, BNL, and Alpha Team were from bootlegged tapes. It took quite a while to locate Go Speed Go, but music stores around here are a little better now. In the case of the first two, they've done well enough by me, that I imagine they're ok that the first time I heard them it wasn't exactly "legal." When I finally track down the last couple of missing albums Long Tall Weekend, and the singles I might not know exist, I'll be making the ultimate TMBG compilation cd. An mp3 disc so utterly sweet that I'll be able to glue my face plate on, as I'll never need to change a cd again. I would bet the Johns would be fine with that, their business managers on the other hand....
I guess it's the engineer in me. It's ok for me if things don't work, or don't work reliably. All that's important, for me, is for failure to be predictable. So while you see stereotypes as far too inaccurate, I see them as fast! and their modes of failure predictable and avoidable (for a good engineer of course:))
Like I know, in retrospect one of the things that affects my views on race are when I was in 5th grade there were two black kids, Freed and Rashard who, independant of each other, would just wail on me and never got busted for it. Needless to say, it doesn't take long before what isn't always true, certainly is true enough. (It's worth noting that I am TERRIBLE at remembering names, but I remember theirs.) For whatever reason, they didn't end up in the same middle school I did. And this other black kid, kenny (probably kennith now) got in a fight for something I said, which pissed him off, which surprised the hell out of me. For whatever reason, nothing came of it, and we ended up walking to school together and hanging out. Come to find out, part of it was white kids used to wail on him where he came from. But I had a ton of sweet GI Joe stuff and he had MTV, so it was all good.
Then what I think finally led me to my current view was when I was working retail to pay for college. I knew that black people frequently had a bad experience shopping. So I tried extra hard to hit the theoretical ideal of service, so on balance it would average out. Then I found out one of the things that black people dislike, is being doted on by an overly attentive person. So how do in the function of my job serve them in the way they wished to be served? That's acctually a very difficult problem to solve in moments. You'd really need to watch someone for a little bit, and everyone universally finds being watched like that at least a little threatening. So I decided it was a problem I can't solve, so I won't bother trying. Just do my job the same, and if some people take it the wrong way, well that really is their problem.
Ultimately I think that people making decisions based on race, that also correlate, even if realatively, loosly with race, does in part validate the use of stereotypes, and makes them unavoidable.
I think 'spade is a spade' is ok as many people assume you're talking about suits of cards now. Paddy wagons reffered to them being full of irish drunks right? Outside of Boston, or other strongly irish communities I don't think anyone, including the irish really give a crap. Irish drunks are a fun stereotype, I'm in the neighborhood of 1\4 irish so I think I'm covered on that one.
It's funny, and underscores my own level of self involvement. But if I happen to be in a situation where I'm in close proximity to a number of black guys, I obsess on how critically they're estimating my level of racism. Which is funny, since they're not likely to be thinking about me at all if we're not interacting in some way. As far as Gladd goes, they probably wouldn't be my biggest fan. I picked up the habbit of using gay, lame, or weak interchangably. And they have better publicists than the Polio Survivors of America.
Want to make a bunch of preinternet college guys heads turn, have the British guy say, "Hey, I'm going outside to smoke a fag."
Kids are all pretty cool. But the idea of taking care of one, since I'm fully aware of how much of a goof I am, scares the hell out of me. And seriousness is seriously overrated.
Sapphires are single crystals alumina (Al2O3), alumina is white, as the clear crystals that make it up scatter the light. Rolex and some other high end watches use sapphire faces (because it's very hard), which are completely clear. I think they're clear to UV too which is why they're used in optics. But the blue sapphires everyone associates the gem stones with come from all over. Alumina is really common. They get their blue color from being either oxygen poor or rich, I can't remember right now....it could be nitrogen too, but I'm pretty sure its oxygen. I believe the most sought after ones are the yoggle(sp?) sapphires of montana.
She's at the dropping hint stage. I did look briefly once. The pitch I had considered was why not go simple and put the money saved on rings and all that other stuff into a house. But I'm still at the undecided stage, as is she. She just wants to 'move forward.' We need to get on the same page. But I'm normally a go along to get along guy, I believe the technical term is 'whipped'. So she's likely to be surprised, and surprise can be fun, or very very not fun.
I've found a metastable state I like, even though it might not be ideal, it's always a gamble to destabilize it. Maybe it will come to a new better equilibrium, maybe it will disintigrate.
I don't really get motion sickness. Although initially the shrooms made me queasy. But the secret shroom level in ROTT. Holy mother...I needed some dramamine for that one.
If I stand close to the TV and lean forward a bit while playing Time Splitters 2, I get just a touch of a queasy tingle. Too much free time you say?
You had to activate cheatmode first. But I think a \ preceded each code, and should it matter, the codes were actually listed at the end of the executable in plain text if you had a hex editor.
And stick to the walls then slide down. Oh yeah. Great game. That game practically demands a sequel.
Shrooms, the only real god mode, ahh the flame wall, gibs, homing missles, johnwoo as a cheat, more trench coats than london fog could shake a stick at, and the excalibat. Nothing was sweeter than excalibating a dark staff shot back on the guy who thought he got the drop on you. Yeah, and hearing the "No F-ing way!" float back to you down the halls of the dorm, that was the sprinkles on that cupcake.
I would still say even those have their place in humor. Stuff like why I can't say "nigger" (not that I have a need to) based in stereotypes. A useful one imho. Upon seeing the freakish, glare eminating from my nearly translucet flesh, people know I'm not part of the community that can use that word. (I could be, but I'm not.) So I am not allowed. Because if I'm not a member, the assumption is that if I used that particular perjoritive, I mean them harm, and I put them at risk. Quite rightly so, particularly now, in such a situation, I'd almost certainly be a poser, but the risks are so great, it's best to act as if the more dangerous and less likely case is true. Same kind of thing if someone is walking alone and they see a group of urban youth heading towards them. Their almost certainly wrong in their negative assumptions, but the one time they're right makes up for all the times their wrong.
Or the stereotype of urban youth at the movies. I've seen that one in action, but it was ok, the movie was Ali, and the groups shouting back and forth at each other was far more entertaining. How they made a movie about such an interesting guy so painfully boring will mystify me forever. Jamie Fox was really good in it though.
Back to hateful and stupid. If you know they're untrue, it can be funny to say someone you know conforms to one, as invectives between friends. There was a really good one on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn the other night. (It's a show were four comics and colin insult each other and discuss current events in an informal bare knuckled fashion) An irish guy, a hispanic guy, an italian, a european mutt, and a black guy. One of the comics makes a remark attribiting a black stereotype to the italian, who says, "That's blacks you idiot." To which the mutt replies, "Oh like there's a difference." Funny, at least to me.
I agree that stereotypes come from a wierd emotional place. But instead of trying to wall them off somehow, and expect everyone to do the same, I'd say I advocate using them, always tempered with that higher intellect we've been blessed with. When they get out of hand now days, they're definately more humorous than dangerous. Racists and their kin, sure they're a little scary, a little sad, but they're also really stupid. That always makes me laugh. But deep down, they're acting out of fear, because they're cowards. That makes them a little less scary.
But Chris does rock. He was always really funny, but when he relaxed and lost that self consciousness he had early on in SNL, he's been flirting with greatness.
With the ABM think I try to console myself that it will spin off spectacular civillian technologies that will make the whole kooky mess worthwhile. At the very least the lightweight interceptor should help make a lighter version of the deltas (eventually), cheaper space shots arent all bad. Maybe all the money they pour into the airborn laser will yield the breakthrough that makes inertial confinement fusion viable. (I'm pretty certain inertial confinment is the one where they zap a hydrogen pellet with a monsterous laser.) I doubt it. But who knows. I wouldn't have predicted an obscure device built to crack codes or calculate artillary tables would have completely remade the world in a few decades either.
I find that lifegem stuff pretty creepy. Supposedly those guys rolling their own diamonds are certain they'll be able to make them with out the flourescense (which would make me just a little sad), hence that stupid laser inscription system I assume. But I know some diamonds flouresce naturally under uv, the Hope diamond does iirc, so that test isn't fool proof. I should figure out what her birth stone is now, since they change that periodically. Good advice, thanks.
You could try donating some money to a pac that tries to influance how much the US spends on humanitarian aid. If you give to a charity, it may end up there after paying some overhead anyway. And the hundred dollars you give might move a hundred thousand. The state of africa being what it is, it would probably end up there, especially with the US trying to cultivate more allies.
I wonder if she could sue the judge for slander, or libel since it was taken down by the court reporter. What the judge says in that context isn't an opinion, its a statement of fact, and if she's being paid, no matter how worthless she is, she's a professional. Of course I'm not a lawyer:).
Yeah. When the foil that the ink passes through developes a tear and leaks out into a pool destroying your printer, which is now VASTLY more expensive, I think HP will be the one having the last laugh. That's not covered in the warranty.
Hell. On the up side, nice color lasers will get a little cheaper. Hmmm $500 for a lame inkjet, or $1000 for a sweet color laser.
Parody or satire is difficult to deal with, but if applied to a public figure is clearly protected by the First Amendment because the exaggeration or distortions of the truth are not intended to be taken as fact.
The case of Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Fallwell is an example. In that case, Hustler Magazine printed a fake advertisement that parodied a Campari Liquer advertising campaign. In the Hustler publication, the advertisement contained a make-believe interview with Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and a television evangelist, in which he talked about his "first time" to experience sexual intercourse. The vulgar "recounting" of Falwell's "first sexual encounter" was set in an outhouse with him having sex with his mother. Falwell, a teetotaler, was also portrayed as being drunk.
Falwell was outraged by this caricature, so outraged, in fact, that he sued. His lawsuit for libel, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress went to trial. At the close of the evidence, the district court said that even if everything Falwell claimed were true there were no legal grounds upon which he could claim relief. The balance of the case was submitted to the jury, which returned a verdict for Falwell for intentional infliction of emotional distress, although the jury disallowed the libel claim.
On appeal, the Supreme Court heard the case on the First Amendment question of whether a state has authority to protect its citizens from the intentional infliction of emotional distress and whether a public figure may recover damages for his or her distress.
Specifically, the Chief Justice said the issue was whether a state may protect its citizens from patently offensive speech, and he said the First Amendment provided a safe haven for even that mode of speech. The Chief Justice reasoned that even though Falwell was not a public figure who held elective office, he was a public figure who had influence on public affairs and, as such, only had limited capacity to be distressed. The Chief Justice wrote that: "robust political debate encouraged by the First Amendment is bound to produce speech that is critical of those that hold public office or those public figures who are 'intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or by reason of their fame, shape events in area of concern to society at large.'"
The Chief Justice ruled that even so outrageous a rogue, or impish rascal, depending on your point of view, as Larry Flynt is entitled to exercise his First Amendment freedoms in a manner best determined by Flynt, rather than being restricted by any state action. --By Stan Morris from Gigalaw.com
But there are limits it would seem. The creators of Parkwars originally planned to completely parody The Phantom Menace, but thought better of it, at least in part to make sure lawyers didn't come a knocking.
Mr. Morris seems to make a convincing case clearing the way to do what you will with your modest proposal. But the real snag might be copyright.
I believe I provided my own loophole with "almost".:)
Maybe I enjoy a slightly rougher crowd, but rascist and sexist jokes are as popular as ever, they just have to have that new joke smell. We're very egalitarian, we hate everything equally. (Unless it's sweet).
I know this is going to bite me in the butt some day. I've so far managed to hold my tongue. But I can't for the life of me understand the deal with diamonds. It's a shiny rock. It just sits there in a setting and sparkles. And then that's not good enough, some poor african guy has to nearly kill himself digging it out at 130 degrees F. It can't be one of the man made diamonds which are better, and flouresce under ultraviolate light. Why? Because that's not romantic? One of these days, I'm sure I'll end up blurting out the origins of the engagement ring, which will, conicidenatally, preceed The Winter of Great Loneliness, I'm sure. At least with the idea of a gold ring, I can get behind the symbolism. But a little nub of tetragonal carbon? I guess I just don't get it. Not that I've thought about it at all, obviously.
You can usually trust a software engineer who uses ada.
Funnily enough, my favorite book on humor is Mathematics and Humor by John Allen Paulos. It's not as dry as it could be. (Someday I'd like to find a book that looks at the biology of humor, from a evolutionary and neurological perspective. I'm pretty sure dogs enjoy some kinds of practical jokes, for instance.)
I'm pretty sure lawyers are almost out of the lime light. It's going to be managers, accountants, and maybe the media in the spotlight for a while, I suspect. Of course if that missle defence crap ends up being the boondoggle it's threatening to be, there will probably be some decent engineer jokes, particularly if there's a significant mishap. Or if the next teacher to be shot into space follows the last. But so far most of the engineer jokes I know deal with pragmatism gone awry. A doctor an engineer and a lawyer go hunting... I think you can guess the punch line. Rube Goldberg contraptions could even be considered engineering jokes of a sort. Why I'm of the opinion the funniest joke Dennis Miller ever told required at least a passing knowledge of quantum mechanics.
Stereotypes are useful, and inevitable. It's just how we quickly tease a set of expectations out of very complicated matters. But like any good thing, they can go too far. Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge them so harshly.:).
who the hell skims at less than +3?:)
"Just gimme the conclusions and the highlights." Spoken like a true executive. If you don't have the key to the fancy washroom with that strange water fountain next to the toilet yet, expect it soon.
I was half kidding. Ok, maybe one third, but that's as low as I go.
Well, I think to a large part two of those four tow the party line. Perhaps the artists do so out of frustration involved with the nature of the business as it exists now, and there unwillingness to be screwed a little more, after the record companies were so complete in the first place. Being so close to corporate machinery isn't for the faint of heart, their contracts might not be the stuff of child labor laws, but still. Generating a hundred million dollars for a lable to find out after all is said and done, you've managed to dig yourself a million into the hole, certainly may cause one to entertain ideas of joining charlton heston's fan club. They're forced to choose between fighting a system they can't beat, or demanding their fans support the system they themselves wish was gone. Record shop owners...they're just concerned about meeting targets and conforming to more or less arbitrary standards.
Executives and lawyers, the only difference is the executive went on to get an MBA.
But jokes often touch on an element of truth. If lawyers were almost universally ethical people, the jokes wouldn't be funny. They'd be random unconnected remarks. Priest molestation jokes weren't funny until it spilled out rather publicly, with a great many victims seeking redress. (Sure it's a numbers game, there are a lot of priests and lawyers available to stumble in that special spotlight reserved for the ignoble, compared to say astronauts. But you still don't hear that many engineer - child molestor remarks, even after than van damm girl.)
Sometimes cartels and monopolies can be useful, oil and diamonds, for example. But more often than not, they're villians. There are others more deserving of any spare concern I sometimes find myself with than billionairs swindinling the all the little guys they can, seeking government subsidies, and the occasional millionaire. I'm just not a love and sunshine type of guy.
(I also tend to think its 'nice' to not add in the +1 karma whore bonus so the conversation collapses for other people, after it's started to drift a little.)
I, in my overzealous hyperbole, may have mistakenly given the impression that I'm against paying anything above cost.
I realize that with that markup above margin, I'm buying my time back. I'm totally ok with that. 25% for the store, 25% for the distributor, and hell, why not something for the manufacturer too.
Even allowing for that, CD's are way way over priced. Without the cartel, CD's would likely be much cheaper. $5 dollars from a random guy on the street? No, probably not. While his production costs may well be higher (or not considering some of what one hears about the Chinese manufacturers), his supply chain is really short, his costs for the card table negligible. But $10 bucks for a new album, which isn't just chock full of crap, and is at least 30 minutes long, isn't that much to ask.
If the constituent members of the RIAA really have costs so high as to justify use of their super-cartel-ultra-best-friend powers, perhaps they should look into controlling costs rather than illegally manipulating the market to make up the difference. Maybe forcing the market to accept whatever crap the suits think it should like is expensive. I would certainly imagine that acts that promote themselves by word of mouth save on studio time (by sounding decent without special effect wizardry), and advertising.
Until they do something to address the problem, I have a hard time feeling anything but a dull sense that justice is done when a million petty thieves rob the giant thief swindling millions. But then I'm not a lawyer either.
Well, it used to cost about 10 cents to make the cd itself. The packaging costs more. I think about a buck 50 goes to the artist, and about the same to the store IIRC. The rest goes to build Hilary Rosens ultra-secure super-secret super-villain lair, a (gently) used Echelon terminal, and a closet full of body molded rubber piracy fighting suits. This is what has proved to be so expensive, they keep having to let them out. True to form, she loves loves loves her ding dongs.
And if you think that's markup, I've got one word for you my friend. Plastics!
Slashdot Mirror
Vaporware?
Oh you mean Stars! Supernova Genesis. Gah! I still play Stars! dreaming of the day I can finally play Stars! SG.
Well look at education spending. With the space race and the money that went into education, you built a generation of engineers and scientists who dreamed of one day emmigrating to the lunar colonies where they went to their space job and came home to Daryl Hanna until she flipped out and killed them. Now their looking at that nice retirement property next to the golf course.
Engineering and teaching aren't respected. They're lip serviced. What's respected stealing a lot of money from a lot of people and lying to congress about it (only a little). Or being famous. But Ketchup is officially a vegitable now. But I bet there might be more people going into applied math. They might have been overlooked, but they certainly should be lumped in with the rest of the geeks.
Impessive numbers. Now when I go on the Fox News Channel I can definitively announce that within 4 years we'll all have gravitic tidal generators powering our self-sizing, heated, electro-optic camoflauge pants. (Or am I the only one who remembers their guest technology analyst saying that we'd all have zero point energy within 5 years?)
Speaking of Gigi Edgly ... pasty yes, but I like it, too.
was texturing and lighting. I got truespace to play around with, and found that given an object and calipers, it was realitivly trivial to make the model. But I stuggled mightily to get something that would look halfway decent when rendered. It ended up being something that I wasn't able to intuit by myself. Ultimately my limited experience has been making something is 5% modeling, 35% texturing, and 60% lighting.
A book I found that helped my somewhat was The Art of 3-D Computer Animation and Imaging by Isaac Victor Kerlow, ISBN 0-471-28649-4. The short review was that it's a pretty complete overview, if a little dated (it was published in '96) but it has plenty of examples, and while it is layed out like a text book it is a very easy read. While my ability to texture and light stuff did improve to the point where you could tell what I rendered and what I was going for, it's still pretty lacking. It's just not an area I have a great deal of talent, which of course shouldn't reflect on the book.
At least I'm not alone. Judging from all the cg in movies where the lighting doesn't match that of the scene, it's probably one of the most difficult elements to master.
Russel Crowe was great in it. But that wasn't a jedi, that was al pachino.
Don't forget about how the authorities had a press conference about his large porno collection. Just what every guy needs, save a few lives at your minimum wage job only the FBI make sure your porno collection makes weekend update on SNL.
What do you want to bet next time he sees a suspicious package he just quietly turns around and walks away.
Unlike the FBI at least SNL eventually tried to make amends.
If you claimed to have found an unlimited energy source and your only proof was a video tape, and no one has since been able to duplicate your experiment in a lab, everyone would say its a hoax, including NASA.
Dear Mr. Pons,
Please, give it up. You're an idiot. The university that issues degrees, let alone doctorates, in chemistry to people who are unable to understand both convection and electrolysis should probably issue a recall.
The fact that you have an opinion says nothing about the merit of that opinion. Despite what the sophists will tell you, there is an objective truth. Should your flighty ideas contradict the vast preponderance of the evidence, the burden of proof is on you, the person making outrageous claims.
It's the great failing of our culture that our egalitarian leanings take the form that ideas put forth are deserving of equally little skepticism. But while you are a kook, you're not really the problem. It all boils down to popularity being more important than what one knows and what one can do. That blame lies squarely with the public at large.
I have a promotional vinyl copy of Tommy Shaw's Girls With Guns. A catchy and pretty ammusing song. I didn't have a car stereo that did tape, so I asked a guy who had it on one of his play lists to send it to me. I had a copy I was free to duplicate, someone saved me the huge pain in the ass of doing so.
One of the few songs I've gotten off the internet, the others are from bands like The Minibosses, They Might Be Giants, Daft Punk et al that offer songs for download.
Interestingly enough my introduction to TMBG, BNL, and Alpha Team were from bootlegged tapes. It took quite a while to locate Go Speed Go, but music stores around here are a little better now. In the case of the first two, they've done well enough by me, that I imagine they're ok that the first time I heard them it wasn't exactly "legal." When I finally track down the last couple of missing albums Long Tall Weekend, and the singles I might not know exist, I'll be making the ultimate TMBG compilation cd. An mp3 disc so utterly sweet that I'll be able to glue my face plate on, as I'll never need to change a cd again. I would bet the Johns would be fine with that, their business managers on the other hand....
I guess it's the engineer in me. It's ok for me if things don't work, or don't work reliably. All that's important, for me, is for failure to be predictable. So while you see stereotypes as far too inaccurate, I see them as fast! and their modes of failure predictable and avoidable (for a good engineer of course :))
Like I know, in retrospect one of the things that affects my views on race are when I was in 5th grade there were two black kids, Freed and Rashard who, independant of each other, would just wail on me and never got busted for it. Needless to say, it doesn't take long before what isn't always true, certainly is true enough. (It's worth noting that I am TERRIBLE at remembering names, but I remember theirs.) For whatever reason, they didn't end up in the same middle school I did. And this other black kid, kenny (probably kennith now) got in a fight for something I said, which pissed him off, which surprised the hell out of me. For whatever reason, nothing came of it, and we ended up walking to school together and hanging out. Come to find out, part of it was white kids used to wail on him where he came from. But I had a ton of sweet GI Joe stuff and he had MTV, so it was all good.
Then what I think finally led me to my current view was when I was working retail to pay for college. I knew that black people frequently had a bad experience shopping. So I tried extra hard to hit the theoretical ideal of service, so on balance it would average out. Then I found out one of the things that black people dislike, is being doted on by an overly attentive person. So how do in the function of my job serve them in the way they wished to be served? That's acctually a very difficult problem to solve in moments. You'd really need to watch someone for a little bit, and everyone universally finds being watched like that at least a little threatening. So I decided it was a problem I can't solve, so I won't bother trying. Just do my job the same, and if some people take it the wrong way, well that really is their problem.
Ultimately I think that people making decisions based on race, that also correlate, even if realatively, loosly with race, does in part validate the use of stereotypes, and makes them unavoidable.
I think 'spade is a spade' is ok as many people assume you're talking about suits of cards now. Paddy wagons reffered to them being full of irish drunks right? Outside of Boston, or other strongly irish communities I don't think anyone, including the irish really give a crap. Irish drunks are a fun stereotype, I'm in the neighborhood of 1\4 irish so I think I'm covered on that one.
It's funny, and underscores my own level of self involvement. But if I happen to be in a situation where I'm in close proximity to a number of black guys, I obsess on how critically they're estimating my level of racism. Which is funny, since they're not likely to be thinking about me at all if we're not interacting in some way. As far as Gladd goes, they probably wouldn't be my biggest fan. I picked up the habbit of using gay, lame, or weak interchangably. And they have better publicists than the Polio Survivors of America.
Want to make a bunch of preinternet college guys heads turn, have the British guy say, "Hey, I'm going outside to smoke a fag."
Kids are all pretty cool. But the idea of taking care of one, since I'm fully aware of how much of a goof I am, scares the hell out of me. And seriousness is seriously overrated.
Sapphires are single crystals alumina (Al2O3), alumina is white, as the clear crystals that make it up scatter the light. Rolex and some other high end watches use sapphire faces (because it's very hard), which are completely clear. I think they're clear to UV too which is why they're used in optics. But the blue sapphires everyone associates the gem stones with come from all over. Alumina is really common. They get their blue color from being either oxygen poor or rich, I can't remember right now....it could be nitrogen too, but I'm pretty sure its oxygen. I believe the most sought after ones are the yoggle(sp?) sapphires of montana.
She's at the dropping hint stage. I did look briefly once. The pitch I had considered was why not go simple and put the money saved on rings and all that other stuff into a house. But I'm still at the undecided stage, as is she. She just wants to 'move forward.' We need to get on the same page. But I'm normally a go along to get along guy, I believe the technical term is 'whipped'. So she's likely to be surprised, and surprise can be fun, or very very not fun.
I've found a metastable state I like, even though it might not be ideal, it's always a gamble to destabilize it. Maybe it will come to a new better equilibrium, maybe it will disintigrate.
Five and seven? I would SO own them.
I don't really get motion sickness. Although initially the shrooms made me queasy. But the secret shroom level in ROTT. Holy mother...I needed some dramamine for that one.
If I stand close to the TV and lean forward a bit while playing Time Splitters 2, I get just a touch of a queasy tingle. Too much free time you say?
You had to activate cheatmode first. But I think a \ preceded each code, and should it matter, the codes were actually listed at the end of the executable in plain text if you had a hex editor.
And stick to the walls then slide down. Oh yeah. Great game. That game practically demands a sequel.
Shrooms, the only real god mode, ahh the flame wall, gibs, homing missles, johnwoo as a cheat, more trench coats than london fog could shake a stick at, and the excalibat. Nothing was sweeter than excalibating a dark staff shot back on the guy who thought he got the drop on you. Yeah, and hearing the "No F-ing way!" float back to you down the halls of the dorm, that was the sprinkles on that cupcake.
I would still say even those have their place in humor. Stuff like why I can't say "nigger" (not that I have a need to) based in stereotypes. A useful one imho. Upon seeing the freakish, glare eminating from my nearly translucet flesh, people know I'm not part of the community that can use that word. (I could be, but I'm not.) So I am not allowed. Because if I'm not a member, the assumption is that if I used that particular perjoritive, I mean them harm, and I put them at risk. Quite rightly so, particularly now, in such a situation, I'd almost certainly be a poser, but the risks are so great, it's best to act as if the more dangerous and less likely case is true. Same kind of thing if someone is walking alone and they see a group of urban youth heading towards them. Their almost certainly wrong in their negative assumptions, but the one time they're right makes up for all the times their wrong.
Or the stereotype of urban youth at the movies. I've seen that one in action, but it was ok, the movie was Ali, and the groups shouting back and forth at each other was far more entertaining. How they made a movie about such an interesting guy so painfully boring will mystify me forever. Jamie Fox was really good in it though.
Back to hateful and stupid. If you know they're untrue, it can be funny to say someone you know conforms to one, as invectives between friends. There was a really good one on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn the other night. (It's a show were four comics and colin insult each other and discuss current events in an informal bare knuckled fashion) An irish guy, a hispanic guy, an italian, a european mutt, and a black guy. One of the comics makes a remark attribiting a black stereotype to the italian, who says, "That's blacks you idiot." To which the mutt replies, "Oh like there's a difference." Funny, at least to me.
I agree that stereotypes come from a wierd emotional place. But instead of trying to wall them off somehow, and expect everyone to do the same, I'd say I advocate using them, always tempered with that higher intellect we've been blessed with. When they get out of hand now days, they're definately more humorous than dangerous. Racists and their kin, sure they're a little scary, a little sad, but they're also really stupid. That always makes me laugh. But deep down, they're acting out of fear, because they're cowards. That makes them a little less scary.
But Chris does rock. He was always really funny, but when he relaxed and lost that self consciousness he had early on in SNL, he's been flirting with greatness.
With the ABM think I try to console myself that it will spin off spectacular civillian technologies that will make the whole kooky mess worthwhile. At the very least the lightweight interceptor should help make a lighter version of the deltas (eventually), cheaper space shots arent all bad. Maybe all the money they pour into the airborn laser will yield the breakthrough that makes inertial confinement fusion viable. (I'm pretty certain inertial confinment is the one where they zap a hydrogen pellet with a monsterous laser.) I doubt it. But who knows. I wouldn't have predicted an obscure device built to crack codes or calculate artillary tables would have completely remade the world in a few decades either.
I find that lifegem stuff pretty creepy. Supposedly those guys rolling their own diamonds are certain they'll be able to make them with out the flourescense (which would make me just a little sad), hence that stupid laser inscription system I assume. But I know some diamonds flouresce naturally under uv, the Hope diamond does iirc, so that test isn't fool proof. I should figure out what her birth stone is now, since they change that periodically. Good advice, thanks.
You could try donating some money to a pac that tries to influance how much the US spends on humanitarian aid. If you give to a charity, it may end up there after paying some overhead anyway. And the hundred dollars you give might move a hundred thousand. The state of africa being what it is, it would probably end up there, especially with the US trying to cultivate more allies.
I wonder if she could sue the judge for slander, or libel since it was taken down by the court reporter. What the judge says in that context isn't an opinion, its a statement of fact, and if she's being paid, no matter how worthless she is, she's a professional. Of course I'm not a lawyer :).
Yeah. When the foil that the ink passes through developes a tear and leaks out into a pool destroying your printer, which is now VASTLY more expensive, I think HP will be the one having the last laugh. That's not covered in the warranty.
Hell. On the up side, nice color lasers will get a little cheaper. Hmmm $500 for a lame inkjet, or $1000 for a sweet color laser.
This came up for me once. Sometimes people just can't take a good yo' mamma joke.
When Stan Morris speaks, people listen.
Parody and Satire
Parody or satire is difficult to deal with, but if applied to a public figure is clearly protected by the First Amendment because the exaggeration or distortions of the truth are not intended to be taken as fact.
The case of Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Fallwell is an example. In that case, Hustler Magazine printed a fake advertisement that parodied a Campari Liquer advertising campaign. In the Hustler publication, the advertisement contained a make-believe interview with Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and a television evangelist, in which he talked about his "first time" to experience sexual intercourse. The vulgar "recounting" of Falwell's "first sexual encounter" was set in an outhouse with him having sex with his mother. Falwell, a teetotaler, was also portrayed as being drunk.
Falwell was outraged by this caricature, so outraged, in fact, that he sued. His lawsuit for libel, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress went to trial. At the close of the evidence, the district court said that even if everything Falwell claimed were true there were no legal grounds upon which he could claim relief. The balance of the case was submitted to the jury, which returned a verdict for Falwell for intentional infliction of emotional distress, although the jury disallowed the libel claim.
On appeal, the Supreme Court heard the case on the First Amendment question of whether a state has authority to protect its citizens from the intentional infliction of emotional distress and whether a public figure may recover damages for his or her distress.
Specifically, the Chief Justice said the issue was whether a state may protect its citizens from patently offensive speech, and he said the First Amendment provided a safe haven for even that mode of speech. The Chief Justice reasoned that even though Falwell was not a public figure who held elective office, he was a public figure who had influence on public affairs and, as such, only had limited capacity to be distressed. The Chief Justice wrote that: "robust political debate encouraged by the First Amendment is bound to produce speech that is critical of those that hold public office or those public figures who are 'intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or by reason of their fame, shape events in area of concern to society at large.'"
The Chief Justice ruled that even so outrageous a rogue, or impish rascal, depending on your point of view, as Larry Flynt is entitled to exercise his First Amendment freedoms in a manner best determined by Flynt, rather than being restricted by any state action.
--By Stan Morris from Gigalaw.com
But there are limits it would seem. The creators of Parkwars originally planned to completely parody The Phantom Menace, but thought better of it, at least in part to make sure lawyers didn't come a knocking.
Mr. Morris seems to make a convincing case clearing the way to do what you will with your modest proposal. But the real snag might be copyright.
I believe I provided my own loophole with "almost". :)
... I think you can guess the punch line. Rube Goldberg contraptions could even be considered engineering jokes of a sort. Why I'm of the opinion the funniest joke Dennis Miller ever told required at least a passing knowledge of quantum mechanics.
:).
:)
Maybe I enjoy a slightly rougher crowd, but rascist and sexist jokes are as popular as ever, they just have to have that new joke smell. We're very egalitarian, we hate everything equally. (Unless it's sweet).
I know this is going to bite me in the butt some day. I've so far managed to hold my tongue. But I can't for the life of me understand the deal with diamonds. It's a shiny rock. It just sits there in a setting and sparkles. And then that's not good enough, some poor african guy has to nearly kill himself digging it out at 130 degrees F. It can't be one of the man made diamonds which are better, and flouresce under ultraviolate light. Why? Because that's not romantic? One of these days, I'm sure I'll end up blurting out the origins of the engagement ring, which will, conicidenatally, preceed The Winter of Great Loneliness, I'm sure. At least with the idea of a gold ring, I can get behind the symbolism. But a little nub of tetragonal carbon? I guess I just don't get it. Not that I've thought about it at all, obviously.
You can usually trust a software engineer who uses ada.
Funnily enough, my favorite book on humor is Mathematics and Humor by John Allen Paulos. It's not as dry as it could be. (Someday I'd like to find a book that looks at the biology of humor, from a evolutionary and neurological perspective. I'm pretty sure dogs enjoy some kinds of practical jokes, for instance.)
I'm pretty sure lawyers are almost out of the lime light. It's going to be managers, accountants, and maybe the media in the spotlight for a while, I suspect. Of course if that missle defence crap ends up being the boondoggle it's threatening to be, there will probably be some decent engineer jokes, particularly if there's a significant mishap. Or if the next teacher to be shot into space follows the last. But so far most of the engineer jokes I know deal with pragmatism gone awry. A doctor an engineer and a lawyer go hunting
Stereotypes are useful, and inevitable. It's just how we quickly tease a set of expectations out of very complicated matters. But like any good thing, they can go too far. Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge them so harshly.
who the hell skims at less than +3?
"Just gimme the conclusions and the highlights." Spoken like a true executive. If you don't have the key to the fancy washroom with that strange water fountain next to the toilet yet, expect it soon.
I was half kidding. Ok, maybe one third, but that's as low as I go.
Well, I think to a large part two of those four tow the party line. Perhaps the artists do so out of frustration involved with the nature of the business as it exists now, and there unwillingness to be screwed a little more, after the record companies were so complete in the first place. Being so close to corporate machinery isn't for the faint of heart, their contracts might not be the stuff of child labor laws, but still. Generating a hundred million dollars for a lable to find out after all is said and done, you've managed to dig yourself a million into the hole, certainly may cause one to entertain ideas of joining charlton heston's fan club. They're forced to choose between fighting a system they can't beat, or demanding their fans support the system they themselves wish was gone. Record shop owners...they're just concerned about meeting targets and conforming to more or less arbitrary standards.
Executives and lawyers, the only difference is the executive went on to get an MBA.
But jokes often touch on an element of truth. If lawyers were almost universally ethical people, the jokes wouldn't be funny. They'd be random unconnected remarks. Priest molestation jokes weren't funny until it spilled out rather publicly, with a great many victims seeking redress. (Sure it's a numbers game, there are a lot of priests and lawyers available to stumble in that special spotlight reserved for the ignoble, compared to say astronauts. But you still don't hear that many engineer - child molestor remarks, even after than van damm girl.)
Sometimes cartels and monopolies can be useful, oil and diamonds, for example. But more often than not, they're villians. There are others more deserving of any spare concern I sometimes find myself with than billionairs swindinling the all the little guys they can, seeking government subsidies, and the occasional millionaire. I'm just not a love and sunshine type of guy.
(I also tend to think its 'nice' to not add in the +1 karma whore bonus so the conversation collapses for other people, after it's started to drift a little.)
Well, *they* are lawyers.
I, in my overzealous hyperbole, may have mistakenly given the impression that I'm against paying anything above cost.
I realize that with that markup above margin, I'm buying my time back. I'm totally ok with that. 25% for the store, 25% for the distributor, and hell, why not something for the manufacturer too.
Even allowing for that, CD's are way way over priced. Without the cartel, CD's would likely be much cheaper. $5 dollars from a random guy on the street? No, probably not. While his production costs may well be higher (or not considering some of what one hears about the Chinese manufacturers), his supply chain is really short, his costs for the card table negligible. But $10 bucks for a new album, which isn't just chock full of crap, and is at least 30 minutes long, isn't that much to ask.
If the constituent members of the RIAA really have costs so high as to justify use of their super-cartel-ultra-best-friend powers, perhaps they should look into controlling costs rather than illegally manipulating the market to make up the difference. Maybe forcing the market to accept whatever crap the suits think it should like is expensive. I would certainly imagine that acts that promote themselves by word of mouth save on studio time (by sounding decent without special effect wizardry), and advertising.
Until they do something to address the problem, I have a hard time feeling anything but a dull sense that justice is done when a million petty thieves rob the giant thief swindling millions. But then I'm not a lawyer either.
Well, it used to cost about 10 cents to make the cd itself. The packaging costs more. I think about a buck 50 goes to the artist, and about the same to the store IIRC. The rest goes to build Hilary Rosens ultra-secure super-secret super-villain lair, a (gently) used Echelon terminal, and a closet full of body molded rubber piracy fighting suits. This is what has proved to be so expensive, they keep having to let them out. True to form, she loves loves loves her ding dongs.
And if you think that's markup, I've got one word for you my friend. Plastics!
Well *I* won't be satisfied until I see a VH1 behind the music in two years about how Hilary Rosen is in Soviet Russia selling her body for 8-tracks!
It's also worth noting that there were only one thousand discs involved, each one had the one decent song off thirty five otherwise crappy albums.