And what about safety? I certainly would not feel safe as a young woman walking a mile to my home with an arm full of crap. Perfect target, especially since cities are generally high in crime. I feel much safer walking straight to my car and driving with locked doors.
You're describing how you feel in a typical existing city, but we are supposed to be talking about a car-free city.
If the city streets were full of people, I don't think this would be such a problem. For instance, you probably don't feel unsafe carrying your shopping bags around in a mall.
Completely OT, but there is also an environmentalist argument against abandoning cork. The Spanish and Portugese cork oak forests are the natural habitat of the Iberian lynx. There are only 150 of these animals left in the wild. Harvesting cork does not kill the trees, which can live several hundred years. But as demand for cork drops, the forests are cleared to grow other crops.
IOW, if you want to help prevent the extinction of the lynx (which would be the first cat to become extinct since the saber-toothed tiger), buy real cork whenever possible.
Preventing the extinction of Lynx, the browser, is a whole 'nother issue...
My wife taught me a 100% effective cure that I have never seen or heard anywhere else... Unfortunately, you have to have someone else do it to you; I haven't had much success curing myself this way.
To cure someone else: Simply bring the tip of your index finger to the tip of their nose, just barely making contact. Hold still and wait. Try not to laugh. Within 30 seconds, their hiccups should be gone.
I'm not sure why it works; I always assumed that it tends to make one's breathing more shallow, or something like that. Now that I've read the article, though, I wonder if it has something to do with the nursing instinct. An infant's nose is usually touching the mother while nursing.
First of all, Elvis was a pop star. It took a little bit more musicianship to be a pop star in the early days of rock-n-roll than it does today, but not much. I think Britney can probably sing roughly as well as Elvis. I'm not aware that she can play the guitar at all, but no one listens to Elvis for his guitar-playing. Elvis was presumably a better songwriter (although it bears mentioning that most of his biggest hits were written or co-written by other people), but Britney is a better dancer. Note that I don't particularly care for either one of them.
The point is, Elvis was just as much a pop star as Britney. He didn't succeed based on his meager musical talent, or his (shudder) acting ability. He and Britney both succeeded based on the same "formula-driven" marketing. The main difference is which formula; in Elvis' day the formula was to take "black" music and repackage it with more marketable white performers... The history of jazz tells a similar story.
People want to hear some good MUSIC. They don't give a crap about the "whole package"
Odd then, that the "whole package" tends to do so much better... And that it seems even serious musicians have to be somewhat attractive in order to have a reasonable chance at success. Ever wonder why? Maybe most people DO give a crap about the "whole package" after all?
My point is that the cause behind violent people is far more complex than is presented in bills such as this one
Your previous post did not support this point in any way. It simply denied that video games contribute to real-world violence, saying nothing about any other cause -- and did so based on a sample of one.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are a sample of two. If someone tried to imply that they present any kind of meaningful evidence that video games induce violence, no doubt you would reject it. However, you are using the exact same kind of logic, and it is just as wrong when you do it.
From what I've seen, children need better protection from their bigoted, closed-minded, double-standard-upholding parents.
"What you've seen" is not a satisfactory sample, either. You say that you grew up in a religious town, which is an admission that your sample is unrepresentative of the larger population. Even within the population of your home town, your sample is probably too small, and insufficiently random, to allow your conclusion to be extrapolated even within that community. This does not even get into questions of objectivity, and how qualified you are to assess the true causes.
But to address your main point, I agree that the causes of violence are complex and multivariate. However, you have provided no meaningful evidence for why video games should not be considered as one of these causes.
Another reason why it is pointless to argue along anecdotal lines is that you really don't know the degree to which these video games might have affected you personally. They didn't turn you into a killer, obviously, but violent behavior is not true/false, it is a continuum. I take it you are not a violent person now; that's great. But how do you know you wouldn't be even less violent if you had never played them? (That's rhetorical -- you don't know, and I don't know either.)
Wrong. A pregant 15 year old girl can choose to whether or not to get an abortion.
One counterexample, or even a dozen, would not refute my point, because my point was not absolute. I said "much of anything" and "almost always." Besides, a 15-year old is a far cry from an embryo... The ability to communicate, first of all, is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the ability to give any type of consent.
The point I'm trying to make is that I don't think that the issue of "consent" is really where your problem lies. Are you also concerned about a full-term infant's inability to consent to the mother getting an epidural during childbirth? What about a newborn's inability to consent to being put up for adoption? Or the countless other decisions unilaterally imposed upon infants by their parents before they are old enough to communicate anything more than sophisticated than sleepy, hungry, and wet? And on into childhood...
Your response to me, and other comments you've made in this thread, hint at another reason behind your stance on this issue. However, I'm not getting into it, because it is ultimately a metaphysical debate, unwinnable by either side. My point is simply that the question of the embryo's consent is a red herring.
Something had to have happened in these places and many others throughout the globe to engender such speculation and argument.
As you may have read today, absolutely nothing extraordinary happened to the men who opened King Tut's tomb, yet we still had to endure 80 years of speculation and argument about the mythical "mummy's curse."
a baby does not have the ability to consent to such a procedure.
That's what parents are for. Seriously. A U.S. citizen cannot give legal consent to much of *anything* until they are 18 years old. The parents' consent will almost always trump the child's refusal. So, the inability of an embryo to give consent is irrelevant.
make false claims about what the person you're debating with thinks to
try to discredit them is pointless. whom are you trying to fool?
I don't have time to define two-letter words for
you. Can you appreciate the difference between
a factual claim (e.g. "You think X, therefore...")
and a conditional statement (e.g. "If you
think X, then...")?
So, if I understand correctly, and you do not
think that the RIAA is too "stupid" to know better,
then apparently you agree with my "sloppy thinking,"
since that was my point from the beginning.
what does illegal music sound like? i'm not familiar with that particular genre...
I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by pretending you don't know what I mean. I don't think it is inaccurate to refer to the bootleg mp3s on file-sharing networks as "illegal music." Granted, there is another way to read that phrase, but only a pedant would choose it.
"Suits" do the same thing. They
see a financial or economic inefficiency and they create a "device" (a
financial instrument or business, say) to exploit it. They are money
hackers. Profit is just another way of saying efficiency which
everyone here knows is related to elegance.
Please explain to me how Big Mouth Billy Bass
makes the world more efficient and/or elegant.
Look how stupid the
RIAA is! Obviously, they really, genuinely
believe every deliberately crafted word in every
one of their press releases... It couldn't
possibly be propaganda... No, I think it's safe
to say that with all of their billions of dollars,
they still can't hire anyone who actually
understands the issues, so I'm going to mock
them for their stupidity, and go download a bunch
of illegal music to which fair use does not apply
by any stretch of the imagination... But it's
okay, because the RIAA is so stupid!
I disagree. My sister, an English Lit. snob, had
never read the books because she thought they
were just pulpy fantasy books for geeks. I took
her to see Fellowship. She immediately asked to
borrow the first book, and now she's geeking out
over the trilogy in a way that puts me to shame.
Example: She wants to get in touch with her "inner
elf" by learning Elvish.
Seriously, she used to make fun of people like
this. And it was the movie that paved the way.
When you play a piano, you can feel the hammers hitting the strings.
Actually, you can't. The hammer loses contact with the rest of the action before it hits the strings so that it can bounce back and allow the strings to resonate. Otherwise, by holding the key down, you would also be holding the hammer against the strings, giving you a nice "thud" sound.
But I'm just being pedantic. Yes, the action has a certain feel that is lacking in most synthesizers. There are a few, though, that have come reasonably close.
Slashdot Mirror
And an overwhelming number of sources of professional advice to choose among...
Too bad they never registered it as a trademark for their nonexistent search engine. If they had, you might have a point.
Oh, but they "claimed" it, whatever that means...
If the city streets were full of people, I don't think this would be such a problem. For instance, you probably don't feel unsafe carrying your shopping bags around in a mall.
scotch logic: A statement about groupthink is obviously intended to be applied to every single member of that group.
Sure they will. They'll just have to license the technology from Intel.
They probably won't, but hypothetically they would be able to, assuming they're willing to pay the price.
IOW, if you want to help prevent the extinction of the lynx (which would be the first cat to become extinct since the saber-toothed tiger), buy real cork whenever possible.
Preventing the extinction of Lynx, the browser, is a whole 'nother issue...
To cure someone else: Simply bring the tip of your index finger to the tip of their nose, just barely making contact. Hold still and wait. Try not to laugh. Within 30 seconds, their hiccups should be gone.
I'm not sure why it works; I always assumed that it tends to make one's breathing more shallow, or something like that. Now that I've read the article, though, I wonder if it has something to do with the nursing instinct. An infant's nose is usually touching the mother while nursing.
First of all, Elvis was a pop star. It took a little bit more musicianship to be a pop star in the early days of rock-n-roll than it does today, but not much. I think Britney can probably sing roughly as well as Elvis. I'm not aware that she can play the guitar at all, but no one listens to Elvis for his guitar-playing. Elvis was presumably a better songwriter (although it bears mentioning that most of his biggest hits were written or co-written by other people), but Britney is a better dancer. Note that I don't particularly care for either one of them.
The point is, Elvis was just as much a pop star as Britney. He didn't succeed based on his meager musical talent, or his (shudder) acting ability. He and Britney both succeeded based on the same "formula-driven" marketing. The main difference is which formula; in Elvis' day the formula was to take "black" music and repackage it with more marketable white performers... The history of jazz tells a similar story.
Odd then, that the "whole package" tends to do so much better... And that it seems even serious musicians have to be somewhat attractive in order to have a reasonable chance at success. Ever wonder why? Maybe most people DO give a crap about the "whole package" after all?
Oh, please. Get over yourself.
Possibly back to the U.S., where by that time we will be the ones willing to work for peanuts.
2. Lather, rinse, repeat.
3. Profit!
Your previous post did not support this point in any way. It simply denied that video games contribute to real-world violence, saying nothing about any other cause -- and did so based on a sample of one.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are a sample of two. If someone tried to imply that they present any kind of meaningful evidence that video games induce violence, no doubt you would reject it. However, you are using the exact same kind of logic, and it is just as wrong when you do it.
"What you've seen" is not a satisfactory sample, either. You say that you grew up in a religious town, which is an admission that your sample is unrepresentative of the larger population. Even within the population of your home town, your sample is probably too small, and insufficiently random, to allow your conclusion to be extrapolated even within that community. This does not even get into questions of objectivity, and how qualified you are to assess the true causes.
But to address your main point, I agree that the causes of violence are complex and multivariate. However, you have provided no meaningful evidence for why video games should not be considered as one of these causes.
Another reason why it is pointless to argue along anecdotal lines is that you really don't know the degree to which these video games might have affected you personally. They didn't turn you into a killer, obviously, but violent behavior is not true/false, it is a continuum. I take it you are not a violent person now; that's great. But how do you know you wouldn't be even less violent if you had never played them? (That's rhetorical -- you don't know, and I don't know either.)
EuroSeti.
Well, I agree with the last sentence.
The camera panning and zooming can create the illusion that an object in its field of view is moving.
How else can two months' salary last forever?
One counterexample, or even a dozen, would not refute my point, because my point was not absolute. I said "much of anything" and "almost always." Besides, a 15-year old is a far cry from an embryo... The ability to communicate, first of all, is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the ability to give any type of consent.
The point I'm trying to make is that I don't think that the issue of "consent" is really where your problem lies. Are you also concerned about a full-term infant's inability to consent to the mother getting an epidural during childbirth? What about a newborn's inability to consent to being put up for adoption? Or the countless other decisions unilaterally imposed upon infants by their parents before they are old enough to communicate anything more than sophisticated than sleepy, hungry, and wet? And on into childhood...
Your response to me, and other comments you've made in this thread, hint at another reason behind your stance on this issue. However, I'm not getting into it, because it is ultimately a metaphysical debate, unwinnable by either side. My point is simply that the question of the embryo's consent is a red herring.
As you may have read today, absolutely nothing extraordinary happened to the men who opened King Tut's tomb, yet we still had to endure 80 years of speculation and argument about the mythical "mummy's curse."
That's what parents are for. Seriously. A U.S. citizen cannot give legal consent to much of *anything* until they are 18 years old. The parents' consent will almost always trump the child's refusal. So, the inability of an embryo to give consent is irrelevant.
Either you do or you don't agree with me. Make up your tiny mind.
I don't have time to define two-letter words for you. Can you appreciate the difference between a factual claim (e.g. "You think X, therefore...") and a conditional statement (e.g. "If you think X, then...")?
So, if I understand correctly, and you do not think that the RIAA is too "stupid" to know better, then apparently you agree with my "sloppy thinking," since that was my point from the beginning.
If you think the RIAA comes up with bullshit like this because they're too stupid to know better, then you are the one who is thinking sloppily.
I see, so it's my fault that you aren't funny. I'll make a note of that. :-P
I didn't, fool. I said "bootleg mp3s", thereby limiting my comment to the subset that is illegal.
I didn't, fool. (Nor did I imply it.)
I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by pretending you don't know what I mean. I don't think it is inaccurate to refer to the bootleg mp3s on file-sharing networks as "illegal music." Granted, there is another way to read that phrase, but only a pedant would choose it.
Please explain to me how Big Mouth Billy Bass makes the world more efficient and/or elegant.
Look how stupid the RIAA is! Obviously, they really, genuinely believe every deliberately crafted word in every one of their press releases... It couldn't possibly be propaganda... No, I think it's safe to say that with all of their billions of dollars, they still can't hire anyone who actually understands the issues, so I'm going to mock them for their stupidity, and go download a bunch of illegal music to which fair use does not apply by any stretch of the imagination... But it's okay, because the RIAA is so stupid!
Seriously, she used to make fun of people like this. And it was the movie that paved the way.
Actually, you can't. The hammer loses contact with the rest of the action before it hits the strings so that it can bounce back and allow the strings to resonate. Otherwise, by holding the key down, you would also be holding the hammer against the strings, giving you a nice "thud" sound.
But I'm just being pedantic. Yes, the action has a certain feel that is lacking in most synthesizers. There are a few, though, that have come reasonably close.