Having ONLY seen the 3rd one, with no more than a vague notion what #1 was about and none about #2... I disagree. #3 was a mishmash of every which kind of action, but unfocused and badly paced. The most discrete example being when that girl was dying in the.. whatever they were stuck in, the entire audience (this was a private screening at a corporate function) was saying the same thing.. "Will you please just DIE already?!" And half the time I had no idea who or what was attacking whom, let alone why. And then we had virtual kung fu for no visible reason.
This wasn't just taking a while to get up to speed because of it being a sequel. It was a mishmash from one end to the other, like a bad video game.
I think this huge expansion of the ad industry is inversely proportional to other industry that produces actual goods for sale -- we've lost so much of that to the 3rd world, there's nothing left to sell but *potential future sales*.
Nothing is going to be ideal. And Greenland is just a tiny bit of what would be opened up -- yeah, it's the least useful. There are huge swaths of tundra presently good for nothing due to cold climate, that are much better prospects. Not to mention longer growing seasons in the breadbaskets of the world, and the opening of vast new grazing lands.
As to disease, I'd hope that we know enough by now to use basic methods to check the usual vectors. This isn't 1200AD in Epidemiology, either.
Totally correct, according to the really longterm data. And the "rate of change" is actually in line with that.
It also occurs to me to wonder... what would be so BAD about another "Medieval Warm Period", making *practical* arable and habitable places like the Greenland coast, central Canada, and parts of Siberia? Yeah, you might sacrifice a relatively smaller area elsewhere as desert, but wouldn't it be a net gain for human habitability?
As to species preservation, all well and good, but species come and go all the time; that's the nature of a non-static biosphere.
Seems to my our job is to adapt as needed like any other viable species, not to attempt to freezeframe nature at some theoretically optimal point, lest the nonviable perish. What happens when your freezeframe inevitably collapses and you're stuck with a biosphere that's not *had* to adapt, and is now a large Fail?
It doesn't have to be inches. 3 or 4 car lengths usually suffices to get benefit from drafting after a vehicle of similar or larger size, or as part of a chain of vehicles of similar size.
I do it all the time, in fact since I have to buck wind to get home, I make a point of following a bigger truck if I can... then I can almost take my foot off the gas, rather than having to damnear floor it just to make headway.
But another problem comes to mind: aerodynamics are not uniform across existing vehicles. For the draft-train to work as proposed, it needs to be restricted to a single design.
And I'm wondering what happens if anything but the rearmost vehicle has a tire blowout.
So they tell us, but I'm old enough to remember what it was like before "free trade"... yeah, a good thing for OTHER countries. Not so good for the U.S. And not being a socialist, I don't believe it's our job to pull everyone else up from their gutters at our expense.
This mostly-Republican thinks that's actually a fine proposal. Then again, it amounts to a trade tariff, which makes more sense to me than taxes anyway.:D
That's what I thought too, back in the early days of opensource and community coding projects -- it was supposed to be all about being the most useful product to the majority of users, right? And design choices have to be made, sure, but they follow what most users want, right??
Sad to say I was soon disabused of that notion, and the 700 to 2 vote that the lead dev told us to go fuck ourselves with was the capper. Since then I've never again been surprised when features are changed or removed despite protests from a large segment of users.
In my observation, most people who "believe" in astrology do so as a willing suspension of disbelief -- call it a form of participation entertainment. They *choose* to believe in it for a particular value, much as a kid may know perfectly damned well there's no Santa Claus, yet for one night of the year will *choose* to believe in Santa.
So... folks read their horoscope in the morning (along with the comics and editorials and obituaries and other entertaining nonsense) and if it comes true, great! If not, well, they didn't really believe in it anyway.
No, it's more like the -- what's that system called where everyone is boiled down to four letters?
But remember as a system it's very old. Given the information people had to work with, it was a pretty good effort -- and there ARE some general personality types among humans. That it's more complex than astrology covers, well, doesn't that apply to any modern science, if compared to its roots?
Interesting series of posts, and I think you're right. It's become a religious tenet that the losing side needs to be dragged forth and whipped occasionally, lest anyone fall away from the Correct Disciplines Of Our Enlightened Era. Kinda like the annual display of some defeated barbarian in the town square, to remind us of how great our empire is.
The problem is, as I say above, that over time astrology has come to conflate astronomy with psychology, and rather than recognise its roots in both or study it at all, the Modren Scientist must pooh-pooh astrology lest he feel like a heretic.
The trouble is trying to shoehorn astrology into a hard science discipline, which it patently is not. Functionally it's an early form of psychology as the study of personality types, with all the fuzzy edges of that very soft science. The problem is that when the concept was developed, humanity was still looking to external forces -- gods, stars, fate -- for causation, and the two became conflated.
Probably more to the point, astrology was the first real stab at a science of psychology. The attribution to "the stars" is of course nonsense (unless you consider seasonal factors that may select for or against various genes that in turn influence personality), but the recognition of a variety of basic personality types is spot-on.
Much better view at this resolution, thanks. Kinda looks like someone started with the flying wing concept, then hollowed it out and pasted it onto a standard fuselage. Which might be more promising than a totally new design.
1980s? I was thinking they look more like toy models I had when I was a kid... 50 years ago. Of real planes. Now, ask yourself, why didn't those designs succeed into the present?
In my observation it really is "Fuck the users, WE want this".
I'm reminded of a vote that was taken over another removed functionality way back in the Mozilla newsgroup era... the vote in the newsgroup was 700 to keep it, and just 2 agreed with the dev who wanted to remove it. The dev removed it, and told the users that Moz wasn't being made for THEM anyway.
My guess is it's a smart if sleazy personal injury lawyer who set legworkers on uneducated folks until he found one who could be convinced being traumatized was his own idea, and now intends to milk it into a settlement, of which he'll take half.
If it doesn't get thrown out of court, expect to see a further spate of similar lawsuits.
Except meanwhile, nothing is being said about Calif's runaway pension obligations, which amount to billions of unfunded debt. And don't expect Brown to be the one to do anything about it... some of us still remember half-built freeways and other financial boondoggles.
Penny wise and pound foolish, that would be CA's financial politics in a nutshell.
That's not the issue. The real issue is being forced to give up your Constitutional rights just because you run a certain type of lawful business. Why should any particular business be singled out for that? And do remember, giving up your right to privacy also effectively negates your right against unreasonable search and seizure.
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Having ONLY seen the 3rd one, with no more than a vague notion what #1 was about and none about #2... I disagree. #3 was a mishmash of every which kind of action, but unfocused and badly paced. The most discrete example being when that girl was dying in the .. whatever they were stuck in, the entire audience (this was a private screening at a corporate function) was saying the same thing.. "Will you please just DIE already?!" And half the time I had no idea who or what was attacking whom, let alone why. And then we had virtual kung fu for no visible reason.
This wasn't just taking a while to get up to speed because of it being a sequel. It was a mishmash from one end to the other, like a bad video game.
I think this huge expansion of the ad industry is inversely proportional to other industry that produces actual goods for sale -- we've lost so much of that to the 3rd world, there's nothing left to sell but *potential future sales*.
Nothing is going to be ideal. And Greenland is just a tiny bit of what would be opened up -- yeah, it's the least useful. There are huge swaths of tundra presently good for nothing due to cold climate, that are much better prospects. Not to mention longer growing seasons in the breadbaskets of the world, and the opening of vast new grazing lands.
As to disease, I'd hope that we know enough by now to use basic methods to check the usual vectors. This isn't 1200AD in Epidemiology, either.
Totally correct, according to the really longterm data. And the "rate of change" is actually in line with that.
It also occurs to me to wonder... what would be so BAD about another "Medieval Warm Period", making *practical* arable and habitable places like the Greenland coast, central Canada, and parts of Siberia? Yeah, you might sacrifice a relatively smaller area elsewhere as desert, but wouldn't it be a net gain for human habitability?
As to species preservation, all well and good, but species come and go all the time; that's the nature of a non-static biosphere.
Seems to my our job is to adapt as needed like any other viable species, not to attempt to freezeframe nature at some theoretically optimal point, lest the nonviable perish. What happens when your freezeframe inevitably collapses and you're stuck with a biosphere that's not *had* to adapt, and is now a large Fail?
Because you can sell anything if you claim it's required by the socially-dominant religion, and that anyone who resists is going to hell.
It doesn't have to be inches. 3 or 4 car lengths usually suffices to get benefit from drafting after a vehicle of similar or larger size, or as part of a chain of vehicles of similar size.
I do it all the time, in fact since I have to buck wind to get home, I make a point of following a bigger truck if I can... then I can almost take my foot off the gas, rather than having to damnear floor it just to make headway.
But another problem comes to mind: aerodynamics are not uniform across existing vehicles. For the draft-train to work as proposed, it needs to be restricted to a single design.
And I'm wondering what happens if anything but the rearmost vehicle has a tire blowout.
So they tell us, but I'm old enough to remember what it was like before "free trade"... yeah, a good thing for OTHER countries. Not so good for the U.S. And not being a socialist, I don't believe it's our job to pull everyone else up from their gutters at our expense.
Well, yeah... I'm getting to be more of a libertarian in my old age :D
Well, think of it this way. Once all the foreigners have been screwed over and are dead-broke, the dollar might be worth something again.
See? G-S is just doing what's best for America. ;)
This mostly-Republican thinks that's actually a fine proposal. Then again, it amounts to a trade tariff, which makes more sense to me than taxes anyway. :D
That's what I thought too, back in the early days of opensource and community coding projects -- it was supposed to be all about being the most useful product to the majority of users, right? And design choices have to be made, sure, but they follow what most users want, right??
Sad to say I was soon disabused of that notion, and the 700 to 2 vote that the lead dev told us to go fuck ourselves with was the capper. Since then I've never again been surprised when features are changed or removed despite protests from a large segment of users.
In my observation, most people who "believe" in astrology do so as a willing suspension of disbelief -- call it a form of participation entertainment. They *choose* to believe in it for a particular value, much as a kid may know perfectly damned well there's no Santa Claus, yet for one night of the year will *choose* to believe in Santa.
So... folks read their horoscope in the morning (along with the comics and editorials and obituaries and other entertaining nonsense) and if it comes true, great! If not, well, they didn't really believe in it anyway.
No, it's more like the -- what's that system called where everyone is boiled down to four letters?
But remember as a system it's very old. Given the information people had to work with, it was a pretty good effort -- and there ARE some general personality types among humans. That it's more complex than astrology covers, well, doesn't that apply to any modern science, if compared to its roots?
What does the Two Thousand Year Old Man have to say about it? He knows everything!
Interesting series of posts, and I think you're right. It's become a religious tenet that the losing side needs to be dragged forth and whipped occasionally, lest anyone fall away from the Correct Disciplines Of Our Enlightened Era. Kinda like the annual display of some defeated barbarian in the town square, to remind us of how great our empire is.
The problem is, as I say above, that over time astrology has come to conflate astronomy with psychology, and rather than recognise its roots in both or study it at all, the Modren Scientist must pooh-pooh astrology lest he feel like a heretic.
The trouble is trying to shoehorn astrology into a hard science discipline, which it patently is not. Functionally it's an early form of psychology as the study of personality types, with all the fuzzy edges of that very soft science. The problem is that when the concept was developed, humanity was still looking to external forces -- gods, stars, fate -- for causation, and the two became conflated.
Probably more to the point, astrology was the first real stab at a science of psychology. The attribution to "the stars" is of course nonsense (unless you consider seasonal factors that may select for or against various genes that in turn influence personality), but the recognition of a variety of basic personality types is spot-on.
Much better view at this resolution, thanks. Kinda looks like someone started with the flying wing concept, then hollowed it out and pasted it onto a standard fuselage. Which might be more promising than a totally new design.
1980s? I was thinking they look more like toy models I had when I was a kid... 50 years ago. Of real planes. Now, ask yourself, why didn't those designs succeed into the present?
Well, that sucks... yeah, animated GIFs are not as common as other dancing crap, but if users can't turn it off, watch for a comeback.
In my observation it really is "Fuck the users, WE want this".
I'm reminded of a vote that was taken over another removed functionality way back in the Mozilla newsgroup era... the vote in the newsgroup was 700 to keep it, and just 2 agreed with the dev who wanted to remove it. The dev removed it, and told the users that Moz wasn't being made for THEM anyway.
Doesn't it have the option where you can set looping to ONCE? that's been in other browsers for years. Takes right care of the animated GIFs.
My guess is it's a smart if sleazy personal injury lawyer who set legworkers on uneducated folks until he found one who could be convinced being traumatized was his own idea, and now intends to milk it into a settlement, of which he'll take half.
If it doesn't get thrown out of court, expect to see a further spate of similar lawsuits.
Except meanwhile, nothing is being said about Calif's runaway pension obligations, which amount to billions of unfunded debt. And don't expect Brown to be the one to do anything about it... some of us still remember half-built freeways and other financial boondoggles.
Penny wise and pound foolish, that would be CA's financial politics in a nutshell.
That's not the issue. The real issue is being forced to give up your Constitutional rights just because you run a certain type of lawful business. Why should any particular business be singled out for that? And do remember, giving up your right to privacy also effectively negates your right against unreasonable search and seizure.