No parent will ever buy a DVD like this - imagine having to authorise playback every time your kid wants to watch a moive. Mine sometimes changes her mind 4 or 5 times over the course of an hour. She can swap disks fine herself...
Maybe you should cut that back or show some more control on that issue. It sounds like your kid's got the early warning signs of ADHD if she can't focus on one program for more than an average of 15 minutes. Cutting back the TV might help. Studies have shown a direct correlation between hours of TV watched and likelihood of having ADHD.
From someone who has ADHD, this could become a problem for her when she gets in school. Having such a short attention span makes learning difficult when your daughter will inevitably hit some subject that she can't sail through with her eyes closed. It may take as long as college to hit, but it will happen. A short attention span may also lead to behavioral problems. I'd seriously recommend talking to a child psychologist about this, and I'd seriously keep talking until you find one whose recommendation isn't just to stuff her full of Ritalin.
Kids need to learn to deal with boredom and to focus on tasks for a long time. A kid who can't do that isn't prepared for school much less the real world. Take it from someone who's been there himself.
Holy moly. I just erased a huge rebuttal to what you just said after reading the good news. Last time I checked back in November (when Samsung's original 61" 1080p DLP was officially overdue), Samsung said that it was jacking up the price on its offerings from $6500 to $9000. How we're seeing price ranges from that company from $4500-$7000 for 1080p DLPs. We might actually see relief.
I was going to mention the price increase and couple it with the fact that all the LCoS sets including Sony's new SXRD are going to be going for >$10000, but this is good news. You might be right. It'd be nice to get a 1080p screen with some decent black levels as opposed to my current Sharp AQUOS set.
That's being extremly disingenuous. What you said was:
Incidentally, was I the only person who felt that insinuating that PJ's religion was wacko was particularly ironic, given that Maureen's paymasters at SCO were based in Utah, home of the not-exactly-christian-orthodox Church of the Latter Day Saints. (emphasis mine)
Why would this be "ironic" if the LDS church itself couldn't be considered "wacko?" I'm mainline Protestant not LDS, and I don't actually consider them to be part of mainstream Christianity, but I don't consider them "wackos" either. (Of course, on the internet, if you stick up for someone, you're assumed to be one of them.) My roommate is Mormon, and he's actually been one of most engaging people to talk with about the Bible since his church made him do some intensive studies into it and some missionary time. To insinuate that he's a "wacko" because of his beliefs is highly insulting.
You clearly meant to disparage O'Gara as a hypocrite by way of disparaging the dominant religion of Utah where SCO is located (implying directly that SCO's directors are LDS members). You post immediately drew flame from this before I could even finish my post. Ergo, you deserved to be modded Flamebait.
The debate over whether the LDS church is Christian or not is not really appropriate for Slashdot. Suffice it to say, LDS believers think that they are, and non-LDS believers don't. The LDS church may have different beliefs that mainstream Protestant and Evangelical Christianity, but none of them are extreme or offensive. It isn't a high pressure cult, and it doesn't profess any sort of belief stranger to the outside observer than any other major world religion.
It certainly does not merit the label "wacko," and there is no way that the parent poster tossed about that term without fully knowing that he would cause offense. Mod the parent "-1, Flamebait."
Since it wasn't 100%, I'd say that your ability to interpret statistics is a little lacking if you're in fact claiming that all Southerners are "uneducated, superstitious/religious, or inherently unintelligent." The two strongest states for support of Bush were western states -- Utah and Wyoming. In the good 'ol antebellum South, no state gave Kerry less than 36% of the vote, with most Southern states hovering at about 40%. By your own limited litmus test for "intelligence," around 40% of Southerners meet the criteria.
Your own state only gave Kerry 53%. (I assume you're from Washington by your nick.) In essence, only 12% more of your population is "intelligent" than people from Georgia, and roughly half of your population is just as "dumb."
Of course, all this stereotyping and bigotry only reveals your own narrow, uneducated worldview. There are plenty of dumb, uneducated Democrats (think inner-city demographics) just as there are plenty of educated Republicans (think most business leaders). There are plenty of religious people who are Democrats because of their desire to help the downtrodden, and there are plenty of atheist Republicans who care most about taxes and deregulation. There are many Democrats held their nose and voted for Bush, and there are many Republicans who held their nose and voted for Kerry.
Actually, people like you share a lot in common with people like Bush. You seem to think that a majority (even a slim one) complete defines the characteristics of a region. The minority matters too, so take your condescending attitude and shove it. Democrats live in the South too, and we're tired of being lumped into the same group as our most obnoxious citizens, and we're also tired of having many of our friends we don't agree with on politics lumped in with them too.
There's skills and then there's (if you'll pardon my language) "m4d 5k1llz!!!1!"
If you only have the former, then it might be better for the company to hire 5 people who can each do only 80% of what you can do for same amount that they paid you. Outsourcing and the H1B visa program have the same thing in common. The skill that many employers most look for is the willingness to work for peanuts.
Only a handful of jobs in the labor market require you to have really good skills. I'd say that 60% of programming jobs that I've seen require no specialized training that you can't get from anywhere, 30% require experience with the company's products or some popular toolkit that anyone can be trained given time, and less than 10% actually require advanced degrees and solid expertise that can't be bought overseas. If you're in the 90% that makes up the first two groups, then too bad. If you're skilled enough to work one of the special jobs, too bad -- there's only a tenth as many of them available as regular jobs.
Of course, from a far enough removed POV, this outsourcing is good for the world. It's just not good from a selfish POV for us Americans. That's why people complain.
One of the major things that he brought up was the fact that increases in automation will inevitably destroy the labor market. AI and better plant design will eventually replace not all but enough jobs to have serious effects on society. What he noted is that we have two choices:
1) Allow wealth to continue to be concentrated into the hands of those who got in early and got ownership of the machines at the expense of the laborers that their property obsoletes.
2) Redistribute wealth to keep those who are not captains of industry out of poverty.
The first option leads to mass poverty which leads to misery, crime, inflation, depression, and social instability. Seriously. Imagine an America were 20% of the workforce cannot find a good job because there are none that they can quality for. What part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" do you see for these people or their kids (especially considering the quality of education in poor areas)? This is a recipe for disaster, and as long as the poor can vote, such a society will not last long. For this very reason, societies with an imbalance of wealth either don't tend to stay free very long or change.
Think of any society other than Britain and America that had large imbalances of wealth that didn't topple. Even in those countries, severe imbalances of wealth lead straight into powerful socialist movements. (See the Progressive Era and the New Deal in American history and 1890s and 1930s England.) Otherwise, such countries collapse into fascism or are toppled by communist and socialist movements. The only stable democracy is one where there is no aristocracy (formal or informal). We have begun a return to the Social Darwinism of the late 19th century that accompanied the last major wave of advances in automation. We will have to see if America will swing to Neo-Feudalism and collapse or moderate Socialism and continuation.
Re:Solo Fired First - Evidence of Force Powers
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How Lightsabers Work
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· Score: 3, Funny
Gee, and I always thought it was an establishing shot to show how Han Solo was a hardened criminal smuggler who was one step ahead of bounty hunters coming for his life. Now I realize that he was always just a regular guy who wouldn't kill a thug out for his blood until he knew he was trying to strike.
Thanks Lucas and AC! Now I realize that Han Solo was never cool.
Yes. Purporting your wishes and opinions as the truth is deception.
Is anyone out there suggesting that some benevolent authority should intervene and saves us from PR?
*Sigh...* Not really, though I personally wish there were some way to have the equivalent of deceptive advertising laws for the press without creating a law that was abusable to also cover the unvarnished truth. However, I don't think any such thing could be accomplished.
Instead the article is suggesting that people take a step back, look, and rekindle their critical thinking skills to pick up on lies, damn lies, and advertising. It's a shame that our public school system doesn't place enough emphasis on this from an early age.
Maybe some of us really do think that the Christian right are extremists, but we would rather talk to them and rein them in a touch...
You get right on that. Some of us Christians are tired of their continued support for expanding the death penalty (John 8), for cutting social programs meant to help the least amongst us (James 5:1-6), and for unjust wars that kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians for the sake of national dominance and material greed (James 3:13-18).
We'd also like to see an end to the justification of the use of differing shades of torture and for cronyism. While you're at it, if you could get them to respect freedom, openness, and tolerance for their fellow brothers, we'd appreciate it.
So, what about Iraq violating those UN resolutions made them more of a threat to our nation's safety than North Korea violating all of theirs? Of the 17 UN resolutions that we used as justification for war, 14 were about weapon inspectors. Two were from 1990-1991 about the invasion of Kuwait and one from 1991 demanded a stop to the oppression of the Iraqi people. The one about oppression applies to other more threatening enemies like Iran and North Korea, non-threatening enemies like Sudan (were genocide took place), and many of our allies like Saudi Arabia and the Israelis (with respect to the occupied territories). It also applied in Bosnia which most conservatives pilloried due to it being outside of our national interest. If WMDs don't matter, especially if you say that we knew they had nothing, then violated UN resolutions don't matter either.
Good Lord, though, if you don't think that our administration lying is a bad thing, I don't know what kind of American you can consider yourself to be. Our President is supposed to be a representative of what the people want and not the man responsible for duping them into what he thinks they should want. What is wrong with conservatives today that they no longer demand honesty of their leaders? If you can't convince the people of what you want with legitimate, truthful reasons, then you shouldn't get what you want. That's how an honest, healthy, democractic republic is supposed to work.
There is nothing wrong with this no matter who does it. All those complaining are doing so out of ignorance. This is a democracy, not some philosopher kings' republic out of Plato's imagination where the wise rule because they are wise.
No, this is a Republic, not some sort of mob-ruled state where winner takes all and the minority is sacrificed for the good of the majority in a pure utilitarian spirit. The right of the opposition to have a voice is essential to freedom. Alexander Hamilton warned many times in the Federalist papers that we must be protected against "the tyranny of the majority."
This is why we have the 1st Amendment (and later the 14th Amendment) -- to protect Americans against the whims of whoever currently has power. This is why we have a merit system instead of a spoils system -- to prevent cronyism and corruption. This is why we have filibusters and balanced committees -- to prevent extremism. This is why we have departments of the government that are designated to be non-partisan -- to prevent cooked data in our policy-making.
Also, this administration is a capitalist one and as such would not want socialists/marxists helping to shape international policy.
Why is it that so many conservatives have a Manichean, black-and-white view of the world? A vote for Kerry is not a vote for the old hammer-and-sickle. Progressive politicians do not want an elimination of capitalism; they want tempered capitalism. They recognize that the free market unchecked tends towards inefficient monopolies and oligarchies in many industries. They recognize that the forces of the market do NOT lead to greater benefits for workers nor cleaner air and water. They recognize that the interests of the wealthy few seeking to retain power and luxury for themselves are not the interests of the whole.
They also recognize that Republicans care little for a free market either. After all, what part does steel tariffs to promote the American steel industry have in a free market? What part does Haliburton's no-bid contracts to feed our troops have in a free market? What part does giving 90% of crop subsidies to big agribusiness donors have in a free market (or crop subsidies in general for that matter)? What do giveaways of federal land to administration favored companies have to do with a free market? Republicans pay as much lip service to capitalism as they do to Christianity.
A vote for a Democrat is not equivalent to wanting to abolish private property and put the control of all production in the hands of a centralized government bureaucracy. A vote for Kerry may have been a vote against a war based on lies. A vote for Kerry may have been a vote against the increased concentration of power in the hands of executive branch and against Soviet-style purges of dissent in neutral government bodies. A vote for Kerry may have been a vote against the merging of church and state. A vote for Kerry may have been a vote against the unchecked growth of the national debt.
A vote for Kerry could mean a lot of things, none of which have ANYTHING to do with a technical standards committee! Supporting this sort of behavior is the same as supporting the Communist Russia's and Fascist Germany's practice of destroying the careers of scientists who did not promote the Party. When truth becomes subordinate to loyalty, everyone suffers.
There is a difference between politics and policy, and it is one that this administration has forgotten. Policy is a bottum-up decision making process based on unbiased facts. Politics is a top-down decision making process based on domga and belief. This President cares nothing for policy, only politics, which is evident in his inability to ever, EVER admit a mistake unless he can pin it on a subordinate.
This tactic is essentially parallel to Tom DeLay's intimidation tactics used against lobbyists. This is dirty politics at its worst. This is intended to make it hard for the opposition party to have any power by cutting off all of the richest funding through belligerent threats.
This is not just. People who truly respect freedom try to compromise with their opponents and not bury them without giving them a voice. The Republicans' naked greed for power is just disgusting.
Do you think that all of those rich people magically got rich from some mythical money fairy? No. Most of them got there through their own hard work. Not all by far, but most did.
All of the retirees I know who have been taking international vacations earned all their money in their life time, and most of them were blue collar workers with a good retirement plan. They had pensions managed for them, but all we need is a little discipline and the willingness to live below our means.
Yeah, and life gets LESS interesting with age, not more, so imagine how boring it's going to be in 20 years.
Not in my experience. (Well, except for 2002-2004. More on that later.) Life is what you make of it. Either you see infinite possibilities, or you see the rut you're stuck in. It's up to you which.
What sort of help?
See a therapist. See a support group. See a church. It doesn't matter who. Just see someone supportive who cares about helping when people are down. If you can't afford a therapist (and who can without insurance), call and ask one anyway about the support group options. Anything's better than nothing.
Like what?
Try jobs like data entry, retail sales, clerking at a hotel desk, daytime construction in the public and private sector, chain restaraunt cook, daytime security guard, customer support for a non-technical product, etc. Call your local unemployment office. Explain that you're still employed, you hate your job and would like a new one, and you don't know where to look. Ask if they can help. Generally, they will. If not, ask your coworkers what kind of jobs they've held, which ones they like, and which ones the don't like.
These aren't going to be great jobs, but they don't involve screwing with your sleep, and they're not any worse than a graveyard-shift production line job. If none of these work for you, try the whole correspondence course thing and get some vocational training for a better paying job. You can do that with your current job or with a new one. Just never give up and settle for future misery just to avoid effort now. It doesn't pay off in the long run (or even the short run).
My job is what many would consider a good one, but I ended up coasting into it after learning that I really didn't enjoy my major in college. I found out that I liked knowing how computers worked and not actually programming them. My job is menial drudge work bug-fixing. I didn't have the initiative to look for other jobs in the same field, and years later my resume is unimpressive. I was pretty unhappy for the last year of college and afterwards until I decided that I wanted to do something else and that I was going to start getting ready for it. I plan to be in grad school in Fall 2006 getting a new degree.
Sure, I'm hurting my retirement funds and adding huge student loans as a financial burden, but I've done a lot of searching, and I think I'll be happier in my new career. I'll be doing things I already enjoy doing in my spare time, unlike computer programming which I only thought I wanted to do without ever actually having done it as a hobby. Plus, I'll be making a difference in other people's lives in my new career. All in all, it's worth it for me.
I'm sure there's something else that you could be doing that you could enjoy, or failing that something that sucks less and doesn't get in the way of things you do enjoy. You just need to get motivated and to seriously think about your alternatives. Everything in life is up to you.
By the time you get to 40, your life's pretty much over anyway, no-one does anything interesting after that.
Tell that to the many movie stars over 40 who still have careers. Tell that to all the national politicians you ever hear about. Tell that to middle aged NFL players. Hell, tell that to retirees on vacation even. After all, it doesn't seem like you're doing anything interesting right now.
Don't patronise me or tell me how healthy I am.
Dude, listen to yourself! Have you said a single positive thing about your life or life in general at all in these posts? Anything? The only things you've mentioned that might give you pleasure are food and alcohol (which are not statements I'm used to hearing from people in good shape). You honestly don't care about your future from what you've said, and nothing you do now gives you fulfillment. If you can't see that you sound horribly depressed, you need to go and talk to someone who might know better as soon as possible.
Get help. Seriously.
I don't sleep better, I sleep worse. Maybe if I was some rich bastard working 9-5 I could get a proper sleeping pattern, rather than have to completely reverse my body-clock every week for a different shift.
Hey, I've been there too for different reasons (all self-imposed due to a lack of discipline and a sensitivity to light). Some sleep therapy has also helped improve my life too. However, if it's really your job that's screwing with you, QUIT! Honestly, if you don't have any skills as you indicate in another post, there are plenty of jobs that don't require a lot of skills that operate on a regular schedule. Good, quality sleep is essential to avoiding misery. Is your current job worth misery and apathy? No? Screw it; find a better one.
I couldn't care less what happens to me 20 years. I'll probably be living under a bridge by then, if I'm still alive. May as well at least try to enjoy myself whilst I'm still here.
Do you call what you're doing now "enjoying" yourself? I don't think that word means what you think it means. If you were actually enjoying life, I think you'd have a different attitude -- more like, "I want more life f---er, I ain't done." Seriously, get help. I've got some friends who are in the same mindset, and I worry a lot about them. Hell, I've been in a similar place with respect to flitting from one empty amusement to another. It sucks, and you won't ever be happy from it unless you have some better reason to live. Seek one out.
(Oh, and whoever modded you Troll is a serious jerk.)
You almost certainly are gifted with a high metabolism. I have a few friends like that. Don't count on it lasting past age 30, much less 40. You will gain weight later in life on that diet. It's not a bad idea to change to a healthier diet and an exercise regimen before you habits get truly ingrained. Furthermore, you'll probably be better off improving your cardiovascular health now rather than after you get tired of buying pants with a wider waistline.
Also, with that kind of diet, I'd watch out for your cholesterol. If you're lucky like me, you may also be blessed with naturally low cholesterol, but I wouldn't count on it.
Of course, no one ever listens to this sort of advice. I don't think I personally know anyone who exercises without having gained a lot of weight first who wasn't in some sort of sport in high school. Even so, I'll still offer it.
I for one don't want to live till I'm 100, that's another 80 years. What's the point in living that long? My life's shit enough as it is, I don't want it to last longer, I want it to be shorter!
Simple. If you live 100 years today, there's a good chance that you may live a lot longer unless some sort of war or economic collapse makes the world go down the drain. Just imagine all the cool stuff that will be available 80 years from now.
At the moment, food is all I have to look forward to, it's all I enjoy. I hate exercise, it makes me feel like shit, and I never have the energy, thanks to my shift-working job I haven't had a proper night's sleep in months.
That's because you're not healthy right now. I've been on both sides of that (and I'm currently in a lazy, unexercising state again). You have more energy, sleep better, and feel less depressed when you have a good workout regimen. It sounds like you're not in a healthy mental state right now if food is all you have to look forward to. Trust me, if you keep up a regular exercise schedule for a month (and not just a few half-hearted attempts), you will enjoy life more.
Exercise isn't something, though, that you can do without a regular schedule for it. I'm currently the voice of experience right now about missing workouts. Once you fall off the wagon, it gets harder and harder to get motivated to get back, and you're back to not feeling as energetic and motivated. (I need to start getting up early again and get back to that.)
With my lifestyle I never have to run anywhere, or life anything heavy, so what do I need health for?
Do it for your brain. If the rest of your body isn't in top shape, neither is your brain. This is especially true of your endocrine system. Body fat is not just an inactive storage system. It seriously affects the levels of insulin and a variety of stress hormones in the bodies of obese people. This helps lead to depression and a corresponding stunted social life. If that's not something you care to fix, that's fine, but you better not have any regrets 10-20 years from now when it's going to be a lot harder to deal with.
No one suggested that people stop reading email in the article. What the article said was that people who get highly distracted by email -- peope who must answer every message NOW -- are not operating at peak efficiency thanks to task switching. The difference was enought to affect IQ. Previous studies have shown that too much context switching affects overall performance.
What the article in fact called for was for people to be more measured in their use of email instead of to drop it completely. I believe the statement was, "Companies should encourage a more balanced and appropriate way of working." Of course, you'd know that if you had read the article. Instead, you made a series of mocking statements and outright dismissed their argument without even reading it.
There's nothing absured about it. IQ is a measurement of your current ability to handle certain kinds of tasks. IQ testing does not and cannot measure "innate" intelligence. As in Feanturi's post, mitigating factors like a poor night's sleep can drop your IQ temporarily. No one fires on all cylinders all the time.
This has got to be some study steered toward a desired result. Either the scientists or the funding organization wanted this result, so they made sure it came to this conclusion.
I'm always bothered by people who have kneejerk reflex to immediately impugn the motives of researchers whose work might suggest an inconvenient change of lifestyle. This is the sort of "La, la! I'm not listening!" mindset of ignoring fact-finding when it conflicts with belief that is running America into the ground.
On the other hand, it has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet. We'll have to see if their methodology holds up. (I really hate press release science.)
You know, this sort of kneejerk reaction has always bothered me intensely.
Scientist: Doing X convenient/fun thing causes Y health/mental problem. Kneejerk: I don't want to change myself, so that's just a stupid lie!
You see this sort of reaction every time someone points out that what you're doing now is bad for you and others. You see it in everything from eating saturated fats to smoking to arsenic in the water to mercury in the air to global warming to too much TV, too much internet, and too much gaming. "Wah, wah! This is fun/cheaper. Why should I have to stop?"
People are willfully blind to the truth whenever it's inconvenient to them.
To me, addiction is when you physically need something, without which you will suffer physical symptoms of withdrawal. Take away the something, and barring permanent damage caused by whatever it was, you'll be good to go to lead a happy, productive life.
I don't think you understand how addiction and withdrawal works. Ask an alcoholic sometime if just because they've been dry for X years if they're still an addict. Just because you take away the drug, you don't get rid of the addiction, and the addiction shapes your personality for the rest of your life. Why do you think so many former alcoholics are smokers, gamblers, or other kinds of addicts.
Look up the relationship between dopamine, pleasure, and addiction sometime. When a particular activity gives pleasure to a person, the connections between that act and the pleasure pathways in the brain are reinforced. After a while, this connection can build up so strongly that a person is literally physically addicted to a non-drug activity. People denied an intellectual addiction become cranky, distracted, nervous, sleepless, and bored when in withdrawal from it. In extreme cases, they can even become violent and have convulsions. (There is one reported case of this happening with internet withdrawal.)
EverQuest is practically designed for addiction. It has a wonderfully designed reward system from a Skinner POV. Skinner was a psychologist who studied reward and punishment systems (primarily in rats). He ran an experiment where rats could push a button to get a reward and one of three things would happen: (a) they'd get a reward at a predictable interval, (b) they'd randomly get a reward, or (c) they'd always eventually get a reward after an undetermined number of hits. Rats in scenario (c) became most quickly fixated on hitting the button. Essentially, this is the same mechanism that helps addict gamblers. It is present in EverQuest's levelling system (where you can't know how much it takes to get to the next level) and in its crafting and other skills system (where success is a gamble on percentages and is required to raise to skill to attempt better items). Getting items in the game follows this model to since monster don't always drop the items you want, and the good items are on monsters that take a long time to respawn and are sought out by many people.
This is not saying that EverQuest addiction isn't the addicts' fault. After all, cocaine addiction is the users' fault. However, this does point out that it's not as easy to just "suck it up" or "grow up" and quit. There literally is an addictive quality. You see this in gamblers, you see this in info junkies, and you see this in gamers. You can be an addict to an intellectual pursuit. Not all addiction is based on an externally supplied chemical.
I know I shouldn't demonstrate knowledge in this, especially when it's present as a joke, but...
In the Victorian language of flowers (which is seeing a small modern revival), the rose is almost always a symbol of love and beauty with a handful of exceptions. Red roses signify passionate loves. Yellow roses signify friendship (or love that lessens into friendship). Pink roses signify grace and beauty. White roses usually signify platonic love (though withered white roses signify the death of love). Specific varieties of rose can signify things from voluptuousness to shyness to feminine youth to capricious beauty.
Jung named the blue rose as a symbol of the impossible. Since the blue rose has long been the unattainable and has been arrived at through contrived means, I suggest any of the following:
1) Impossible / unattainable love 2) Love that overcomes or achieves the impossible 3) Unnatural / unconventional love
You're right about Spain -- the Popular Party did have a nice lead, but mismanagement of the crisis and an attempt to foist the whole thing on ETA contributed to their loss in a country where 90% of the population no longer supported war in Iraq. The Socialists made a very savvy play for power based on this undercurrent in the country and won while Aznar rode support for the war down the drain. While one might argue that he admirably stuck to his guns, it was an unwise move when the polls showed such strong feeling against it.
Labor lost a few seats the last election, but barely held off the Tories and has had to play a more concillatory role than in previous years. The government has lost face, but not that much power. The war in Iraq is deeply unpopular there too. Even before the war, support for it however at only about 50% and has dropped ever since. Labor's strongest problems, though, will be with economic and domestic issues in this next election in May. I predict that Labor will pull through, though.
(I must also admit, even though the war in Iraq is intensely unpopular in Italy especially in the wake of the death of one of their secret service agents, it will be economic issues that are likely to topple Berlusconi's government in the next election.)
I also take exception to charactarizing Jordan's government as particularly oppressive compared to the others.
I put Jordan on the borderline along with Pakistan. I wavered about including it in my post, and probably should have dropped it. The populace doesn't like America very much in spite of the government liking us, and a lot of Arab resent the government of Jordan as a result.
Saddam had ruined Iraq long prior to the Bush invasion. It was not prosperous.
Iraq was prosperous before 1990. I believe that the sanctions against the country were necessary, but it caused a lot of suffering amonst the people and a lot of poverty in an industrialized nation. This has generated a good amount of ill-will against the US in the Arab world. There's a lot of potential in the Iraqi labor force that hasn't been taken proper advantage of that could've fixed lot of this, but the infrastructure of Iraq today is worse than it was even during the 1990-2003 era.
The lawless looting and the insurgent attacks on the populace are new, though, and we're getting the blame for it for not having a proper plan to secure the country in place before invading. If we had locked down the country's weapons and munitions depots, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. As for the plight of the Marsh Shia and the Kurds, the sad truth is that most of the Arab world couldn't give a damn. It is noble and right to help them out, but it does little to soften the negative publicity we've been earning.
Likely it is lucky timing, but prospects for democracy in the region are a lot stronger now than a few years ago, even aside from the two "regime changes": Lebanon, Palestine, even something in Saudi Arabia.
I will grant Lebanon. I will also grant an improvment in Libya. Saudi Arabia's changes are merely cosmetic. All the power is still focused in the hands of the royals and their hand-picked members of parliament. The religious secret police still prey upon the populace, and women's rights are still atrocious.
As for Palestine, I won't give Bush any f---ing credit for sitting on his hands for four years while the Intifada grew worse and waiting for Arafat to die. Many Israelis and Palestinian deaths could have been prevented with some application of the muscular diplomacy he's so fond of. While I will give him credit for advocating a two-state solution and for pressuring Israel to stop settlement expansion, I hold against him his administration's ambivalence about the West Bank barrier and his hinting that Israel should get to keep some West Bank settlements. Those two moves have been very damaging to the Middle East peace process and have convinced most of the world that we are even less of a neutral parter for peace than before. Nothing that was done in Iraq has anything to do with the advancement of peace in Israel & Palestine. Nothing.
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No parent will ever buy a DVD like this - imagine having to authorise playback every time your kid wants to watch a moive. Mine sometimes changes her mind 4 or 5 times over the course of an hour. She can swap disks fine herself...
Maybe you should cut that back or show some more control on that issue. It sounds like your kid's got the early warning signs of ADHD if she can't focus on one program for more than an average of 15 minutes. Cutting back the TV might help. Studies have shown a direct correlation between hours of TV watched and likelihood of having ADHD.
From someone who has ADHD, this could become a problem for her when she gets in school. Having such a short attention span makes learning difficult when your daughter will inevitably hit some subject that she can't sail through with her eyes closed. It may take as long as college to hit, but it will happen. A short attention span may also lead to behavioral problems. I'd seriously recommend talking to a child psychologist about this, and I'd seriously keep talking until you find one whose recommendation isn't just to stuff her full of Ritalin.
Kids need to learn to deal with boredom and to focus on tasks for a long time. A kid who can't do that isn't prepared for school much less the real world. Take it from someone who's been there himself.
Holy moly. I just erased a huge rebuttal to what you just said after reading the good news. Last time I checked back in November (when Samsung's original 61" 1080p DLP was officially overdue), Samsung said that it was jacking up the price on its offerings from $6500 to $9000. How we're seeing price ranges from that company from $4500-$7000 for 1080p DLPs. We might actually see relief.
I was going to mention the price increase and couple it with the fact that all the LCoS sets including Sony's new SXRD are going to be going for >$10000, but this is good news. You might be right. It'd be nice to get a 1080p screen with some decent black levels as opposed to my current Sharp AQUOS set.
That's being extremly disingenuous. What you said was:
Incidentally, was I the only person who felt that insinuating that PJ's religion was wacko was particularly ironic, given that Maureen's paymasters at SCO were based in Utah, home of the not-exactly-christian-orthodox Church of the Latter Day Saints. (emphasis mine)
Why would this be "ironic" if the LDS church itself couldn't be considered "wacko?" I'm mainline Protestant not LDS, and I don't actually consider them to be part of mainstream Christianity, but I don't consider them "wackos" either. (Of course, on the internet, if you stick up for someone, you're assumed to be one of them.) My roommate is Mormon, and he's actually been one of most engaging people to talk with about the Bible since his church made him do some intensive studies into it and some missionary time. To insinuate that he's a "wacko" because of his beliefs is highly insulting.
You clearly meant to disparage O'Gara as a hypocrite by way of disparaging the dominant religion of Utah where SCO is located (implying directly that SCO's directors are LDS members). You post immediately drew flame from this before I could even finish my post. Ergo, you deserved to be modded Flamebait.
Technically, the Branch Davidians are an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventist church.
The debate over whether the LDS church is Christian or not is not really appropriate for Slashdot. Suffice it to say, LDS believers think that they are, and non-LDS believers don't. The LDS church may have different beliefs that mainstream Protestant and Evangelical Christianity, but none of them are extreme or offensive. It isn't a high pressure cult, and it doesn't profess any sort of belief stranger to the outside observer than any other major world religion.
It certainly does not merit the label "wacko," and there is no way that the parent poster tossed about that term without fully knowing that he would cause offense. Mod the parent "-1, Flamebait."
Since it wasn't 100%, I'd say that your ability to interpret statistics is a little lacking if you're in fact claiming that all Southerners are "uneducated, superstitious/religious, or inherently unintelligent." The two strongest states for support of Bush were western states -- Utah and Wyoming. In the good 'ol antebellum South, no state gave Kerry less than 36% of the vote, with most Southern states hovering at about 40%. By your own limited litmus test for "intelligence," around 40% of Southerners meet the criteria.
Your own state only gave Kerry 53%. (I assume you're from Washington by your nick.) In essence, only 12% more of your population is "intelligent" than people from Georgia, and roughly half of your population is just as "dumb."
Of course, all this stereotyping and bigotry only reveals your own narrow, uneducated worldview. There are plenty of dumb, uneducated Democrats (think inner-city demographics) just as there are plenty of educated Republicans (think most business leaders). There are plenty of religious people who are Democrats because of their desire to help the downtrodden, and there are plenty of atheist Republicans who care most about taxes and deregulation. There are many Democrats held their nose and voted for Bush, and there are many Republicans who held their nose and voted for Kerry.
Actually, people like you share a lot in common with people like Bush. You seem to think that a majority (even a slim one) complete defines the characteristics of a region. The minority matters too, so take your condescending attitude and shove it. Democrats live in the South too, and we're tired of being lumped into the same group as our most obnoxious citizens, and we're also tired of having many of our friends we don't agree with on politics lumped in with them too.
There's skills and then there's (if you'll pardon my language) "m4d 5k1llz!!!1!"
If you only have the former, then it might be better for the company to hire 5 people who can each do only 80% of what you can do for same amount that they paid you. Outsourcing and the H1B visa program have the same thing in common. The skill that many employers most look for is the willingness to work for peanuts.
Only a handful of jobs in the labor market require you to have really good skills. I'd say that 60% of programming jobs that I've seen require no specialized training that you can't get from anywhere, 30% require experience with the company's products or some popular toolkit that anyone can be trained given time, and less than 10% actually require advanced degrees and solid expertise that can't be bought overseas. If you're in the 90% that makes up the first two groups, then too bad. If you're skilled enough to work one of the special jobs, too bad -- there's only a tenth as many of them available as regular jobs.
Of course, from a far enough removed POV, this outsourcing is good for the world. It's just not good from a selfish POV for us Americans. That's why people complain.
Yeesh. A little hot under the collar?
One of the major things that he brought up was the fact that increases in automation will inevitably destroy the labor market. AI and better plant design will eventually replace not all but enough jobs to have serious effects on society. What he noted is that we have two choices:
1) Allow wealth to continue to be concentrated into the hands of those who got in early and got ownership of the machines at the expense of the laborers that their property obsoletes.
2) Redistribute wealth to keep those who are not captains of industry out of poverty.
The first option leads to mass poverty which leads to misery, crime, inflation, depression, and social instability. Seriously. Imagine an America were 20% of the workforce cannot find a good job because there are none that they can quality for. What part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" do you see for these people or their kids (especially considering the quality of education in poor areas)? This is a recipe for disaster, and as long as the poor can vote, such a society will not last long. For this very reason, societies with an imbalance of wealth either don't tend to stay free very long or change.
Think of any society other than Britain and America that had large imbalances of wealth that didn't topple. Even in those countries, severe imbalances of wealth lead straight into powerful socialist movements. (See the Progressive Era and the New Deal in American history and 1890s and 1930s England.) Otherwise, such countries collapse into fascism or are toppled by communist and socialist movements. The only stable democracy is one where there is no aristocracy (formal or informal). We have begun a return to the Social Darwinism of the late 19th century that accompanied the last major wave of advances in automation. We will have to see if America will swing to Neo-Feudalism and collapse or moderate Socialism and continuation.
Gee, and I always thought it was an establishing shot to show how Han Solo was a hardened criminal smuggler who was one step ahead of bounty hunters coming for his life. Now I realize that he was always just a regular guy who wouldn't kill a thug out for his blood until he knew he was trying to strike.
Thanks Lucas and AC! Now I realize that Han Solo was never cool.
Is there anything wrong with PR people doing PR?
Yes. Purporting your wishes and opinions as the truth is deception.
Is anyone out there suggesting that some benevolent authority should intervene and saves us from PR?
*Sigh...* Not really, though I personally wish there were some way to have the equivalent of deceptive advertising laws for the press without creating a law that was abusable to also cover the unvarnished truth. However, I don't think any such thing could be accomplished.
Instead the article is suggesting that people take a step back, look, and rekindle their critical thinking skills to pick up on lies, damn lies, and advertising. It's a shame that our public school system doesn't place enough emphasis on this from an early age.
Maybe some of us really do think that the Christian right are extremists, but we would rather talk to them and rein them in a touch...
You get right on that. Some of us Christians are tired of their continued support for expanding the death penalty (John 8), for cutting social programs meant to help the least amongst us (James 5:1-6), and for unjust wars that kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians for the sake of national dominance and material greed (James 3:13-18).
We'd also like to see an end to the justification of the use of differing shades of torture and for cronyism. While you're at it, if you could get them to respect freedom, openness, and tolerance for their fellow brothers, we'd appreciate it.
So, what about Iraq violating those UN resolutions made them more of a threat to our nation's safety than North Korea violating all of theirs? Of the 17 UN resolutions that we used as justification for war, 14 were about weapon inspectors. Two were from 1990-1991 about the invasion of Kuwait and one from 1991 demanded a stop to the oppression of the Iraqi people. The one about oppression applies to other more threatening enemies like Iran and North Korea, non-threatening enemies like Sudan (were genocide took place), and many of our allies like Saudi Arabia and the Israelis (with respect to the occupied territories). It also applied in Bosnia which most conservatives pilloried due to it being outside of our national interest. If WMDs don't matter, especially if you say that we knew they had nothing, then violated UN resolutions don't matter either.
Good Lord, though, if you don't think that our administration lying is a bad thing, I don't know what kind of American you can consider yourself to be. Our President is supposed to be a representative of what the people want and not the man responsible for duping them into what he thinks they should want. What is wrong with conservatives today that they no longer demand honesty of their leaders? If you can't convince the people of what you want with legitimate, truthful reasons, then you shouldn't get what you want. That's how an honest, healthy, democractic republic is supposed to work.
Try actually reading his post. You might find your opinion of it changing.
There is nothing wrong with this no matter who does it. All those complaining are doing so out of ignorance. This is a democracy, not some philosopher kings' republic out of Plato's imagination where the wise rule because they are wise.
No, this is a Republic, not some sort of mob-ruled state where winner takes all and the minority is sacrificed for the good of the majority in a pure utilitarian spirit. The right of the opposition to have a voice is essential to freedom. Alexander Hamilton warned many times in the Federalist papers that we must be protected against "the tyranny of the majority."
This is why we have the 1st Amendment (and later the 14th Amendment) -- to protect Americans against the whims of whoever currently has power. This is why we have a merit system instead of a spoils system -- to prevent cronyism and corruption. This is why we have filibusters and balanced committees -- to prevent extremism. This is why we have departments of the government that are designated to be non-partisan -- to prevent cooked data in our policy-making.
Also, this administration is a capitalist one and as such would not want socialists/marxists helping to shape international policy.
Why is it that so many conservatives have a Manichean, black-and-white view of the world? A vote for Kerry is not a vote for the old hammer-and-sickle. Progressive politicians do not want an elimination of capitalism; they want tempered capitalism. They recognize that the free market unchecked tends towards inefficient monopolies and oligarchies in many industries. They recognize that the forces of the market do NOT lead to greater benefits for workers nor cleaner air and water. They recognize that the interests of the wealthy few seeking to retain power and luxury for themselves are not the interests of the whole.
They also recognize that Republicans care little for a free market either. After all, what part does steel tariffs to promote the American steel industry have in a free market? What part does Haliburton's no-bid contracts to feed our troops have in a free market? What part does giving 90% of crop subsidies to big agribusiness donors have in a free market (or crop subsidies in general for that matter)? What do giveaways of federal land to administration favored companies have to do with a free market? Republicans pay as much lip service to capitalism as they do to Christianity.
A vote for a Democrat is not equivalent to wanting to abolish private property and put the control of all production in the hands of a centralized government bureaucracy. A vote for Kerry may have been a vote against a war based on lies. A vote for Kerry may have been a vote against the increased concentration of power in the hands of executive branch and against Soviet-style purges of dissent in neutral government bodies. A vote for Kerry may have been a vote against the merging of church and state. A vote for Kerry may have been a vote against the unchecked growth of the national debt.
A vote for Kerry could mean a lot of things, none of which have ANYTHING to do with a technical standards committee! Supporting this sort of behavior is the same as supporting the Communist Russia's and Fascist Germany's practice of destroying the careers of scientists who did not promote the Party. When truth becomes subordinate to loyalty, everyone suffers.
There is a difference between politics and policy, and it is one that this administration has forgotten. Policy is a bottum-up decision making process based on unbiased facts. Politics is a top-down decision making process based on domga and belief. This President cares nothing for policy, only politics, which is evident in his inability to ever, EVER admit a mistake unless he can pin it on a subordinate.
This tactic is essentially parallel to Tom DeLay's intimidation tactics used against lobbyists. This is dirty politics at its worst. This is intended to make it hard for the opposition party to have any power by cutting off all of the richest funding through belligerent threats.
This is not just. People who truly respect freedom try to compromise with their opponents and not bury them without giving them a voice. The Republicans' naked greed for power is just disgusting.
Yeah, famous rich people. Not ordinary people.
Do you think that all of those rich people magically got rich from some mythical money fairy? No. Most of them got there through their own hard work. Not all by far, but most did.
All of the retirees I know who have been taking international vacations earned all their money in their life time, and most of them were blue collar workers with a good retirement plan. They had pensions managed for them, but all we need is a little discipline and the willingness to live below our means.
Yeah, and life gets LESS interesting with age, not more, so imagine how boring it's going to be in 20 years.
Not in my experience. (Well, except for 2002-2004. More on that later.) Life is what you make of it. Either you see infinite possibilities, or you see the rut you're stuck in. It's up to you which.
What sort of help?
See a therapist. See a support group. See a church. It doesn't matter who. Just see someone supportive who cares about helping when people are down. If you can't afford a therapist (and who can without insurance), call and ask one anyway about the support group options. Anything's better than nothing.
Like what?
Try jobs like data entry, retail sales, clerking at a hotel desk, daytime construction in the public and private sector, chain restaraunt cook, daytime security guard, customer support for a non-technical product, etc. Call your local unemployment office. Explain that you're still employed, you hate your job and would like a new one, and you don't know where to look. Ask if they can help. Generally, they will. If not, ask your coworkers what kind of jobs they've held, which ones they like, and which ones the don't like.
These aren't going to be great jobs, but they don't involve screwing with your sleep, and they're not any worse than a graveyard-shift production line job. If none of these work for you, try the whole correspondence course thing and get some vocational training for a better paying job. You can do that with your current job or with a new one. Just never give up and settle for future misery just to avoid effort now. It doesn't pay off in the long run (or even the short run).
My job is what many would consider a good one, but I ended up coasting into it after learning that I really didn't enjoy my major in college. I found out that I liked knowing how computers worked and not actually programming them. My job is menial drudge work bug-fixing. I didn't have the initiative to look for other jobs in the same field, and years later my resume is unimpressive. I was pretty unhappy for the last year of college and afterwards until I decided that I wanted to do something else and that I was going to start getting ready for it. I plan to be in grad school in Fall 2006 getting a new degree.
Sure, I'm hurting my retirement funds and adding huge student loans as a financial burden, but I've done a lot of searching, and I think I'll be happier in my new career. I'll be doing things I already enjoy doing in my spare time, unlike computer programming which I only thought I wanted to do without ever actually having done it as a hobby. Plus, I'll be making a difference in other people's lives in my new career. All in all, it's worth it for me.
I'm sure there's something else that you could be doing that you could enjoy, or failing that something that sucks less and doesn't get in the way of things you do enjoy. You just need to get motivated and to seriously think about your alternatives. Everything in life is up to you.
By the time you get to 40, your life's pretty much over anyway, no-one does anything interesting after that.
Tell that to the many movie stars over 40 who still have careers. Tell that to all the national politicians you ever hear about. Tell that to middle aged NFL players. Hell, tell that to retirees on vacation even. After all, it doesn't seem like you're doing anything interesting right now.
Don't patronise me or tell me how healthy I am.
Dude, listen to yourself! Have you said a single positive thing about your life or life in general at all in these posts? Anything? The only things you've mentioned that might give you pleasure are food and alcohol (which are not statements I'm used to hearing from people in good shape). You honestly don't care about your future from what you've said, and nothing you do now gives you fulfillment. If you can't see that you sound horribly depressed, you need to go and talk to someone who might know better as soon as possible.
Get help. Seriously.
I don't sleep better, I sleep worse. Maybe if I was some rich bastard working 9-5 I could get a proper sleeping pattern, rather than have to completely reverse my body-clock every week for a different shift.
Hey, I've been there too for different reasons (all self-imposed due to a lack of discipline and a sensitivity to light). Some sleep therapy has also helped improve my life too. However, if it's really your job that's screwing with you, QUIT! Honestly, if you don't have any skills as you indicate in another post, there are plenty of jobs that don't require a lot of skills that operate on a regular schedule. Good, quality sleep is essential to avoiding misery. Is your current job worth misery and apathy? No? Screw it; find a better one.
I couldn't care less what happens to me 20 years. I'll probably be living under a bridge by then, if I'm still alive. May as well at least try to enjoy myself whilst I'm still here.
Do you call what you're doing now "enjoying" yourself? I don't think that word means what you think it means. If you were actually enjoying life, I think you'd have a different attitude -- more like, "I want more life f---er, I ain't done." Seriously, get help. I've got some friends who are in the same mindset, and I worry a lot about them. Hell, I've been in a similar place with respect to flitting from one empty amusement to another. It sucks, and you won't ever be happy from it unless you have some better reason to live. Seek one out.
(Oh, and whoever modded you Troll is a serious jerk.)
You almost certainly are gifted with a high metabolism. I have a few friends like that. Don't count on it lasting past age 30, much less 40. You will gain weight later in life on that diet. It's not a bad idea to change to a healthier diet and an exercise regimen before you habits get truly ingrained. Furthermore, you'll probably be better off improving your cardiovascular health now rather than after you get tired of buying pants with a wider waistline.
Also, with that kind of diet, I'd watch out for your cholesterol. If you're lucky like me, you may also be blessed with naturally low cholesterol, but I wouldn't count on it.
Of course, no one ever listens to this sort of advice. I don't think I personally know anyone who exercises without having gained a lot of weight first who wasn't in some sort of sport in high school. Even so, I'll still offer it.
I for one don't want to live till I'm 100, that's another 80 years. What's the point in living that long? My life's shit enough as it is, I don't want it to last longer, I want it to be shorter!
Simple. If you live 100 years today, there's a good chance that you may live a lot longer unless some sort of war or economic collapse makes the world go down the drain. Just imagine all the cool stuff that will be available 80 years from now.
At the moment, food is all I have to look forward to, it's all I enjoy. I hate exercise, it makes me feel like shit, and I never have the energy, thanks to my shift-working job I haven't had a proper night's sleep in months.
That's because you're not healthy right now. I've been on both sides of that (and I'm currently in a lazy, unexercising state again). You have more energy, sleep better, and feel less depressed when you have a good workout regimen. It sounds like you're not in a healthy mental state right now if food is all you have to look forward to. Trust me, if you keep up a regular exercise schedule for a month (and not just a few half-hearted attempts), you will enjoy life more.
Exercise isn't something, though, that you can do without a regular schedule for it. I'm currently the voice of experience right now about missing workouts. Once you fall off the wagon, it gets harder and harder to get motivated to get back, and you're back to not feeling as energetic and motivated. (I need to start getting up early again and get back to that.)
With my lifestyle I never have to run anywhere, or life anything heavy, so what do I need health for?
Do it for your brain. If the rest of your body isn't in top shape, neither is your brain. This is especially true of your endocrine system. Body fat is not just an inactive storage system. It seriously affects the levels of insulin and a variety of stress hormones in the bodies of obese people. This helps lead to depression and a corresponding stunted social life. If that's not something you care to fix, that's fine, but you better not have any regrets 10-20 years from now when it's going to be a lot harder to deal with.
No one suggested that people stop reading email in the article. What the article said was that people who get highly distracted by email -- peope who must answer every message NOW -- are not operating at peak efficiency thanks to task switching. The difference was enought to affect IQ. Previous studies have shown that too much context switching affects overall performance.
What the article in fact called for was for people to be more measured in their use of email instead of to drop it completely. I believe the statement was, "Companies should encourage a more balanced and appropriate way of working." Of course, you'd know that if you had read the article. Instead, you made a series of mocking statements and outright dismissed their argument without even reading it.
Hence, "kneejerk."
There's nothing absured about it. IQ is a measurement of your current ability to handle certain kinds of tasks. IQ testing does not and cannot measure "innate" intelligence. As in Feanturi's post, mitigating factors like a poor night's sleep can drop your IQ temporarily. No one fires on all cylinders all the time.
This has got to be some study steered toward a desired result. Either the scientists or the funding organization wanted this result, so they made sure it came to this conclusion.
I'm always bothered by people who have kneejerk reflex to immediately impugn the motives of researchers whose work might suggest an inconvenient change of lifestyle. This is the sort of "La, la! I'm not listening!" mindset of ignoring fact-finding when it conflicts with belief that is running America into the ground.
On the other hand, it has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet. We'll have to see if their methodology holds up. (I really hate press release science.)
You know, this sort of kneejerk reaction has always bothered me intensely.
Scientist: Doing X convenient/fun thing causes Y health/mental problem.
Kneejerk: I don't want to change myself, so that's just a stupid lie!
You see this sort of reaction every time someone points out that what you're doing now is bad for you and others. You see it in everything from eating saturated fats to smoking to arsenic in the water to mercury in the air to global warming to too much TV, too much internet, and too much gaming. "Wah, wah! This is fun/cheaper. Why should I have to stop?"
People are willfully blind to the truth whenever it's inconvenient to them.
To me, addiction is when you physically need something, without which you will suffer physical symptoms of withdrawal. Take away the something, and barring permanent damage caused by whatever it was, you'll be good to go to lead a happy, productive life.
I don't think you understand how addiction and withdrawal works. Ask an alcoholic sometime if just because they've been dry for X years if they're still an addict. Just because you take away the drug, you don't get rid of the addiction, and the addiction shapes your personality for the rest of your life. Why do you think so many former alcoholics are smokers, gamblers, or other kinds of addicts.
Look up the relationship between dopamine, pleasure, and addiction sometime. When a particular activity gives pleasure to a person, the connections between that act and the pleasure pathways in the brain are reinforced. After a while, this connection can build up so strongly that a person is literally physically addicted to a non-drug activity. People denied an intellectual addiction become cranky, distracted, nervous, sleepless, and bored when in withdrawal from it. In extreme cases, they can even become violent and have convulsions. (There is one reported case of this happening with internet withdrawal.)
EverQuest is practically designed for addiction. It has a wonderfully designed reward system from a Skinner POV. Skinner was a psychologist who studied reward and punishment systems (primarily in rats). He ran an experiment where rats could push a button to get a reward and one of three things would happen: (a) they'd get a reward at a predictable interval, (b) they'd randomly get a reward, or (c) they'd always eventually get a reward after an undetermined number of hits. Rats in scenario (c) became most quickly fixated on hitting the button. Essentially, this is the same mechanism that helps addict gamblers. It is present in EverQuest's levelling system (where you can't know how much it takes to get to the next level) and in its crafting and other skills system (where success is a gamble on percentages and is required to raise to skill to attempt better items). Getting items in the game follows this model to since monster don't always drop the items you want, and the good items are on monsters that take a long time to respawn and are sought out by many people.
This is not saying that EverQuest addiction isn't the addicts' fault. After all, cocaine addiction is the users' fault. However, this does point out that it's not as easy to just "suck it up" or "grow up" and quit. There literally is an addictive quality. You see this in gamblers, you see this in info junkies, and you see this in gamers. You can be an addict to an intellectual pursuit. Not all addiction is based on an externally supplied chemical.
I know I shouldn't demonstrate knowledge in this, especially when it's present as a joke, but...
In the Victorian language of flowers (which is seeing a small modern revival), the rose is almost always a symbol of love and beauty with a handful of exceptions. Red roses signify passionate loves. Yellow roses signify friendship (or love that lessens into friendship). Pink roses signify grace and beauty. White roses usually signify platonic love (though withered white roses signify the death of love). Specific varieties of rose can signify things from voluptuousness to shyness to feminine youth to capricious beauty.
Jung named the blue rose as a symbol of the impossible. Since the blue rose has long been the unattainable and has been arrived at through contrived means, I suggest any of the following:
1) Impossible / unattainable love
2) Love that overcomes or achieves the impossible
3) Unnatural / unconventional love
You're right about Spain -- the Popular Party did have a nice lead, but mismanagement of the crisis and an attempt to foist the whole thing on ETA contributed to their loss in a country where 90% of the population no longer supported war in Iraq. The Socialists made a very savvy play for power based on this undercurrent in the country and won while Aznar rode support for the war down the drain. While one might argue that he admirably stuck to his guns, it was an unwise move when the polls showed such strong feeling against it.
Labor lost a few seats the last election, but barely held off the Tories and has had to play a more concillatory role than in previous years. The government has lost face, but not that much power. The war in Iraq is deeply unpopular there too. Even before the war, support for it however at only about 50% and has dropped ever since. Labor's strongest problems, though, will be with economic and domestic issues in this next election in May. I predict that Labor will pull through, though.
(I must also admit, even though the war in Iraq is intensely unpopular in Italy especially in the wake of the death of one of their secret service agents, it will be economic issues that are likely to topple Berlusconi's government in the next election.)
I also take exception to charactarizing Jordan's government as particularly oppressive compared to the others.
I put Jordan on the borderline along with Pakistan. I wavered about including it in my post, and probably should have dropped it. The populace doesn't like America very much in spite of the government liking us, and a lot of Arab resent the government of Jordan as a result.
Saddam had ruined Iraq long prior to the Bush invasion. It was not prosperous.
Iraq was prosperous before 1990. I believe that the sanctions against the country were necessary, but it caused a lot of suffering amonst the people and a lot of poverty in an industrialized nation. This has generated a good amount of ill-will against the US in the Arab world. There's a lot of potential in the Iraqi labor force that hasn't been taken proper advantage of that could've fixed lot of this, but the infrastructure of Iraq today is worse than it was even during the 1990-2003 era.
The lawless looting and the insurgent attacks on the populace are new, though, and we're getting the blame for it for not having a proper plan to secure the country in place before invading. If we had locked down the country's weapons and munitions depots, we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. As for the plight of the Marsh Shia and the Kurds, the sad truth is that most of the Arab world couldn't give a damn. It is noble and right to help them out, but it does little to soften the negative publicity we've been earning.
Likely it is lucky timing, but prospects for democracy in the region are a lot stronger now than a few years ago, even aside from the two "regime changes": Lebanon, Palestine, even something in Saudi Arabia.
I will grant Lebanon. I will also grant an improvment in Libya. Saudi Arabia's changes are merely cosmetic. All the power is still focused in the hands of the royals and their hand-picked members of parliament. The religious secret police still prey upon the populace, and women's rights are still atrocious.
As for Palestine, I won't give Bush any f---ing credit for sitting on his hands for four years while the Intifada grew worse and waiting for Arafat to die. Many Israelis and Palestinian deaths could have been prevented with some application of the muscular diplomacy he's so fond of. While I will give him credit for advocating a two-state solution and for pressuring Israel to stop settlement expansion, I hold against him his administration's ambivalence about the West Bank barrier and his hinting that Israel should get to keep some West Bank settlements. Those two moves have been very damaging to the Middle East peace process and have convinced most of the world that we are even less of a neutral parter for peace than before. Nothing that was done in Iraq has anything to do with the advancement of peace in Israel & Palestine. Nothing.