"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." --Rush, Freewill
If there is a large turnout, then politicians view it as a "mandate" and proceed to use it as justification to do even more damage than usual. Look at the scary fascism of Wisconsin Governor Scott "Mubarak" Walker (R)...he got a good turnout in his election and took it as a mandate to repeal the hard-won legal rights of workers to organize for mutual benefit. His idea of progressivism is a return to the corporate-dominated "company towns" that existed a hundred years ago. Unions would no longer be able to force workers to join, and would face yearly votes to remain certified. If there had been a lackadaisical voter turnout, he wouldn't feel bold enough to lead this outrageous assault on workers' rights. A win for the fascists in Wisconsin will have consequences, as Democrats rely heavily on unions for contributions and campaign footsoldiers to stay in office. Many other states are preparing similar legislation to "Mubarak" Walker's and if we lose Wisconsin we are in for real trouble. The real victims of this sad state of affairs are the children, who have been locked out of schools as teachers take sick leave to protest instead of teaching.
Divine beings in Tolkien's universe are quite real. If one has doubts, then one can simply ask them, or one of their immortal servants. I mean, if the writer wanted to write about how perspective influences events, then that's great. More power to him. But as soon as you set something in Middle Earth, that's it, you have intrinsically accepted how things are in that world. And if you're not doing that, then it ain't Middle Earth, it's just attaching your name to that of a greater writer. The admittance of a great poverty of imagination goes right along with that..."my mind is so tiny I am unable to create anything entirely new, I can only think in terms of a fantasy book I read once." The idea that good can create life and evil can only make imitations or mockeries...let's see, where have we heard that before, OH RIGHT, SAURON DOES THAT.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with 'white' people. Uhhh...yes there is buddy. Where, might I ask, exactly did you study racial theory? The concept of Whiteness is innately bound with racism. Maybe you weren't educated in an institute of higher learning but fortunately others were (Windows admin classes at ITT Tech don't count, unfortunately). "Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history." --Susan Sontag[1]. Sontag was a highly respected intellectual and her attitudes are widely accepted today at the highest levels. Ask around at the department of racial studies at your friendly neighborhood university. You might learn something. But then again, maybe not.
[1] Sontag later apologized for this statement, saying it slandered cancer victims.
Here is the Great White Man, here to exploit the resources of the region while returning nothing to the community. In this particular case the resource is tigers, at least he's shooting them for pictures not pelts so that's a step forward of sorts. Ordinarily, he would never have stooped to socialize with "these people" but he was waiting for a ride (to get the hell out of there). He basks in the attention of these stupid natives - they're amazed by the text to speech functionality, what morons! He revels in the wonderful privilege not only to be White but also to be able to leave this squalor. Does anyone else find this racially offensive? How is this any different from the Victorian attitude that it was the White Man's Burden to civilize India?
He's also a sucker for "the narrative" which says that Whites were good, Bob Geldof was good, and raising money helped to alleviate the Ethiopian famine. It did no such thing. The journalist-heroes of the BBC exposed the fraud some time ago (Geldof's response? Attacking the credibility of the BBC. Yeah, you heard me - like the BBC has an agenda, it is objective reporting of facts without any regard for interpretation.)
The smart people in society are those best able to make these tough judgments. Who do you trust: smart people or the uneducated? How many problems in America would be solved tomorrow by removing idiots from positions where they influence others?
The One Ring was forged to control the wills of others. Slavery is pretty much the definition of evil right there. Not surprised the first example you thought of to support your point was "our soldiers are nothing but murderers" as there are certain people out there who spend lots of time thinking nothing but that. For some reason they cannot think outside their mental straitjackets, and assume that a fantasy novel has anything to do with reality. Elves are the children of Eru who is literally God and who literally created them. Sauron made Orcs by torturing elves and mutilating their DNA with magic. Good = living growing things = freedom for life to grow however it wants. Evil = cannot create = must control other life. But yeah, making the mental jump from fantasy morality to our soldiers are murderers: gotcha.
So Party members defer instant gratification and instead work towards long-term goals. That's the definition of smart right there. Then there's the issue of working yourself into a position where you can use your intellect to benefit others which we call altruism. Again, a trait that the smart people share.
It's funny - there's this typical consensus on Slashdot that the world would be a better place if only The Smart People were in charge and could make the difficult, unpopular decisions that we need to become a true progressive, multicultural society. Instead, time after time we get uneducated dipshits who make random decisions and let things go to hell because there's no direction or overarching plan to ensure a good outcome. A simple faith that things will turn out all right as long as people do whatever they want is scorned as the province of hicks and other lesser minds.
In Vietnam, the smart people really are in charge. The Party doesn't allow just anyone to join, you know. Students are identified by merit and only the best allowed to join. Party work takes up a lot of college time that would otherwise be spent partying. Policies like this one are hammered out by sober, highly educated people for the good of the people they rule. If you have a Ph.D too, then you might be able to have a seat at the table, but please be quiet otherwise as you're simply not qualified to discuss weighty topics. Vietnam's experts have identified a problem with society. The problem is not gaming specifically, but the negative side effects associated where gaming appears. Having identified this problem, they are now proceeding with a solution and will not deviate from that course, no matter how loud the protests are. After all, a child cries when he's told to go to bed when you know he'll get cranky and angry if he doesn't. It's distressing to see responses on Slashdot of all places, that decisions of smart people are being dumped on.
"Useful idiots"? That means Westerners who were openly sympathetic to the Soviet cause. The Soviets knew their own system well and found it beyond belief that well-off Westerners ached to apply the same system to their own societies. The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for putting a happy face on the Ukrainian genocide, for one example.
Morgoth was the original corrupter who desired control of others instead of letting people be cool and do their own thing. The whole world united and threw him literally out of the world. Sauron actively helped him. Innocent animals incapable of making moral choices fled at the approach of Sauron's servants due to the great aura of evil they projected. Saying we have to reinterpret his acts because good and evil don't exist is the worst kind of postmodernist reduction to absurdity. Not surprised your first reaction was to make a comparison to religion, it "fits the narrative".
I tried to read this a while back. I was really excited because I always was more interested in the lives of the Orcs than reading about the hicks of the Shire. My favorite scene in LotR is the two orcs talking to each other and expressing a desire to stuff this Mordor stuff and get lost in the world somewhere distant, where they can waylay passing travelers. It's the closest thing the Orcs get to being treated as characters. I was really disappointed with The Last Ringbearer. It really didn't make any sense, maybe because it was translated? I skipped ahead several times before just giving up. I had really wanted to like this book but it just didn't work.
Of course, the whole thing ignores the fact that Sauron was evil, and he committed many evil acts in his thousands of years of existence prior to the events of LotR. Sauron was a total sociopath control freak. If he were alive today he'd be in charge of a corporation poisoning the public for profit. The entire point of his forging of The One Ring was slavery. Sauron crossed the moral event horizon and went full-on evil when he helped Morgoth destroy the land of Almaren, and that was in the First Age. Honestly, this review tells us a lot more about the reviewer that it does anything. Sample quote: "The novelist Michael Moorcock has attacked Middle-earth as a childishly rose-tinted vision of the Merrie Olde England that never was, as well as willfully blind to the hardships and injustice of preindustrial and feudal societies." WTF? It's a fantasy novel, people. It's something you read when you're not reading real books. Oh. I see. The reviewer has an axe to grind. "So I was horrified to discover that the Chronicles of Narnia, the joy of my childhood and the cornerstone of my imaginative life, were really just the doctrines of the Church in disguise." Yeah, surprise surprise, lady. No wonder she sees racial demonization, it's what she's looking for. Yet another writer who can't write anything original and instead can only parody others. That's the greatest failing of The Last Ringbearer. If the author had something to say, great! Say it. But jeez it's pathetic when the only thing you can do is attach another author's name to your work while criticizing the shit out of it. Am I the only one who is utterly sick to death of sequels, rewrites, spinoffs, and reimaginings? I suppose so if that's what everyone is buying. Can't argue with the market.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It's nice to hear freedom-hating bigots come out and admit that they're hypocrites once in a while.
OK, somebody stop me if I say something out of line.
It seems from the article that a journalist actually thought that there was a big red button somewhere labeled "INTERNET KILL SWITCH - DO NOT TOUCH". This graduate of the college of communications then makes the connection that phone calls were made instead. Really? You think so? He then makes reference to "This morning's New York Times" and then links to an article published three weeks ago. Next, he accuses this unassailable beacon of journalistic accuracy of being wrong. As a crowning achievement, he then gives valuable pagerank to a "Human Rights Defenders" website that openly states that it only exists to lecture Europe, America, and Russia about anti-Muslim crimes without speaking a single word about persecution of religious minorities in Egypt.
I'd say that journalist Kevin Fogarty is a winner all around and represents his profession^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H occupation well.
I see a lot of borderline or open racism in this thread about the Anaheim school district. Let's review the demographics before we start spouting off ignorant bullshit about the students.
Asian 12.09%
Filipino 3.94%
Hispanic 62.02%
Black 3.33%
White 17.17%
Free & Reduced Lunch 52.0%
Limited English Proficiency 27.6% Fluent English Proficiency 36.1% Native English speakers 36.3%
Now, who wants to take back their bigoted statements? Click reply to make apologies for unspoken assumptions about the low achievement levels of the student body.
Three groups in society always have fewer rights than the rest of us: soldiers, prisoners, and children. Soldiers, because they nobly relinquish their rights to protect the rest of us. Prisoners, because they forfeit their rights due to breaking our laws. Children, because forcing them to do things is good for them.
The idea that the human contagion could spread to other planets is horrifying. If there is so much as a single microbe on Mars, then a total ban on human colonization must be put into place. After all colonization of Africa worked out SO WELL.
Why on earth would anyone want to remove yet another limit to human growth? We don't need more energy, we need to use less energy, period. At its base, this means fewer humans. We simply need to decrease the surplus population of ravenously resource-hungry bourgeoisie. It is incredible that in this day and age, there are still no limits on how many children hetero couples are allowed to conceive. Christian sects encourage their brainwashed followers to have as many children as possible, so as to elbow out the smart people. In a democracy this can only mean bad news. What we really need is a Chinese-style one child policy, or better yet incentives for no children at all. Misusing science to find better ways to exploit the earth for more and more energy will just end in tragedy, because there is no end to the hunger for resources.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh. There were no homes in Legend of Zelda, and there were no pots either. Maybe you're thinking of another 25-year-old game?
The PRI used paper ballots and stole election after election for eighty years in Mexico.
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." --Rush, Freewill
If there is a large turnout, then politicians view it as a "mandate" and proceed to use it as justification to do even more damage than usual. Look at the scary fascism of Wisconsin Governor Scott "Mubarak" Walker (R)...he got a good turnout in his election and took it as a mandate to repeal the hard-won legal rights of workers to organize for mutual benefit. His idea of progressivism is a return to the corporate-dominated "company towns" that existed a hundred years ago. Unions would no longer be able to force workers to join, and would face yearly votes to remain certified. If there had been a lackadaisical voter turnout, he wouldn't feel bold enough to lead this outrageous assault on workers' rights. A win for the fascists in Wisconsin will have consequences, as Democrats rely heavily on unions for contributions and campaign footsoldiers to stay in office. Many other states are preparing similar legislation to "Mubarak" Walker's and if we lose Wisconsin we are in for real trouble. The real victims of this sad state of affairs are the children, who have been locked out of schools as teachers take sick leave to protest instead of teaching.
Divine beings in Tolkien's universe are quite real. If one has doubts, then one can simply ask them, or one of their immortal servants. I mean, if the writer wanted to write about how perspective influences events, then that's great. More power to him. But as soon as you set something in Middle Earth, that's it, you have intrinsically accepted how things are in that world. And if you're not doing that, then it ain't Middle Earth, it's just attaching your name to that of a greater writer. The admittance of a great poverty of imagination goes right along with that..."my mind is so tiny I am unable to create anything entirely new, I can only think in terms of a fantasy book I read once." The idea that good can create life and evil can only make imitations or mockeries...let's see, where have we heard that before, OH RIGHT, SAURON DOES THAT.
So you're the blackest white person around, then? Goody for you.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with 'white' people.
Uhhh...yes there is buddy. Where, might I ask, exactly did you study racial theory? The concept of Whiteness is innately bound with racism. Maybe you weren't educated in an institute of higher learning but fortunately others were (Windows admin classes at ITT Tech don't count, unfortunately). "Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history." --Susan Sontag[1]. Sontag was a highly respected intellectual and her attitudes are widely accepted today at the highest levels. Ask around at the department of racial studies at your friendly neighborhood university. You might learn something. But then again, maybe not.
[1] Sontag later apologized for this statement, saying it slandered cancer victims.
Here is the Great White Man, here to exploit the resources of the region while returning nothing to the community. In this particular case the resource is tigers, at least he's shooting them for pictures not pelts so that's a step forward of sorts. Ordinarily, he would never have stooped to socialize with "these people" but he was waiting for a ride (to get the hell out of there). He basks in the attention of these stupid natives - they're amazed by the text to speech functionality, what morons! He revels in the wonderful privilege not only to be White but also to be able to leave this squalor. Does anyone else find this racially offensive? How is this any different from the Victorian attitude that it was the White Man's Burden to civilize India?
He's also a sucker for "the narrative" which says that Whites were good, Bob Geldof was good, and raising money helped to alleviate the Ethiopian famine. It did no such thing. The journalist-heroes of the BBC exposed the fraud some time ago (Geldof's response? Attacking the credibility of the BBC. Yeah, you heard me - like the BBC has an agenda, it is objective reporting of facts without any regard for interpretation.)
The smart people in society are those best able to make these tough judgments. Who do you trust: smart people or the uneducated? How many problems in America would be solved tomorrow by removing idiots from positions where they influence others?
The One Ring was forged to control the wills of others. Slavery is pretty much the definition of evil right there. Not surprised the first example you thought of to support your point was "our soldiers are nothing but murderers" as there are certain people out there who spend lots of time thinking nothing but that. For some reason they cannot think outside their mental straitjackets, and assume that a fantasy novel has anything to do with reality. Elves are the children of Eru who is literally God and who literally created them. Sauron made Orcs by torturing elves and mutilating their DNA with magic. Good = living growing things = freedom for life to grow however it wants. Evil = cannot create = must control other life. But yeah, making the mental jump from fantasy morality to our soldiers are murderers: gotcha.
So: Hitler wasn't evil, but the USA is evil because it does the same things as him. *rolls eyes* Also, Godwin's Law.
So Party members defer instant gratification and instead work towards long-term goals. That's the definition of smart right there. Then there's the issue of working yourself into a position where you can use your intellect to benefit others which we call altruism. Again, a trait that the smart people share.
It's funny - there's this typical consensus on Slashdot that the world would be a better place if only The Smart People were in charge and could make the difficult, unpopular decisions that we need to become a true progressive, multicultural society. Instead, time after time we get uneducated dipshits who make random decisions and let things go to hell because there's no direction or overarching plan to ensure a good outcome. A simple faith that things will turn out all right as long as people do whatever they want is scorned as the province of hicks and other lesser minds.
In Vietnam, the smart people really are in charge. The Party doesn't allow just anyone to join, you know. Students are identified by merit and only the best allowed to join. Party work takes up a lot of college time that would otherwise be spent partying. Policies like this one are hammered out by sober, highly educated people for the good of the people they rule. If you have a Ph.D too, then you might be able to have a seat at the table, but please be quiet otherwise as you're simply not qualified to discuss weighty topics. Vietnam's experts have identified a problem with society. The problem is not gaming specifically, but the negative side effects associated where gaming appears. Having identified this problem, they are now proceeding with a solution and will not deviate from that course, no matter how loud the protests are. After all, a child cries when he's told to go to bed when you know he'll get cranky and angry if he doesn't. It's distressing to see responses on Slashdot of all places, that decisions of smart people are being dumped on.
"Useful idiots"? That means Westerners who were openly sympathetic to the Soviet cause. The Soviets knew their own system well and found it beyond belief that well-off Westerners ached to apply the same system to their own societies. The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for putting a happy face on the Ukrainian genocide, for one example.
Morgoth was the original corrupter who desired control of others instead of letting people be cool and do their own thing. The whole world united and threw him literally out of the world. Sauron actively helped him. Innocent animals incapable of making moral choices fled at the approach of Sauron's servants due to the great aura of evil they projected. Saying we have to reinterpret his acts because good and evil don't exist is the worst kind of postmodernist reduction to absurdity. Not surprised your first reaction was to make a comparison to religion, it "fits the narrative".
I tried to read this a while back. I was really excited because I always was more interested in the lives of the Orcs than reading about the hicks of the Shire. My favorite scene in LotR is the two orcs talking to each other and expressing a desire to stuff this Mordor stuff and get lost in the world somewhere distant, where they can waylay passing travelers. It's the closest thing the Orcs get to being treated as characters. I was really disappointed with The Last Ringbearer. It really didn't make any sense, maybe because it was translated? I skipped ahead several times before just giving up. I had really wanted to like this book but it just didn't work.
Of course, the whole thing ignores the fact that Sauron was evil, and he committed many evil acts in his thousands of years of existence prior to the events of LotR. Sauron was a total sociopath control freak. If he were alive today he'd be in charge of a corporation poisoning the public for profit. The entire point of his forging of The One Ring was slavery. Sauron crossed the moral event horizon and went full-on evil when he helped Morgoth destroy the land of Almaren, and that was in the First Age. Honestly, this review tells us a lot more about the reviewer that it does anything. Sample quote: "The novelist Michael Moorcock has attacked Middle-earth as a childishly rose-tinted vision of the Merrie Olde England that never was, as well as willfully blind to the hardships and injustice of preindustrial and feudal societies." WTF? It's a fantasy novel, people. It's something you read when you're not reading real books. Oh. I see. The reviewer has an axe to grind. "So I was horrified to discover that the Chronicles of Narnia, the joy of my childhood and the cornerstone of my imaginative life, were really just the doctrines of the Church in disguise." Yeah, surprise surprise, lady. No wonder she sees racial demonization, it's what she's looking for. Yet another writer who can't write anything original and instead can only parody others. That's the greatest failing of The Last Ringbearer. If the author had something to say, great! Say it. But jeez it's pathetic when the only thing you can do is attach another author's name to your work while criticizing the shit out of it. Am I the only one who is utterly sick to death of sequels, rewrites, spinoffs, and reimaginings? I suppose so if that's what everyone is buying. Can't argue with the market.
Ooo...good troll. Totally off-topic and guaranteed to get a number of furious responses. *golf clap*
Here's an idea: why don't we actually ask the dissenters what they think instead of putting words in their mouths and creating false dichotomies.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It's nice to hear freedom-hating bigots come out and admit that they're hypocrites once in a while.
What, you mean like the internet?
OK, somebody stop me if I say something out of line.
It seems from the article that a journalist actually thought that there was a big red button somewhere labeled "INTERNET KILL SWITCH - DO NOT TOUCH". This graduate of the college of communications then makes the connection that phone calls were made instead. Really? You think so? He then makes reference to "This morning's New York Times" and then links to an article published three weeks ago. Next, he accuses this unassailable beacon of journalistic accuracy of being wrong. As a crowning achievement, he then gives valuable pagerank to a "Human Rights Defenders" website that openly states that it only exists to lecture Europe, America, and Russia about anti-Muslim crimes without speaking a single word about persecution of religious minorities in Egypt.
I'd say that journalist Kevin Fogarty is a winner all around and represents his profession^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H occupation well.
Asian 12.09%
Filipino 3.94%
Hispanic 62.02%
Black 3.33%
White 17.17%
Free & Reduced Lunch 52.0%
Limited English Proficiency 27.6%
Fluent English Proficiency 36.1%
Native English speakers 36.3%
Now, who wants to take back their bigoted statements? Click reply to make apologies for unspoken assumptions about the low achievement levels of the student body.
Three groups in society always have fewer rights than the rest of us: soldiers, prisoners, and children. Soldiers, because they nobly relinquish their rights to protect the rest of us. Prisoners, because they forfeit their rights due to breaking our laws. Children, because forcing them to do things is good for them.
The idea that the human contagion could spread to other planets is horrifying. If there is so much as a single microbe on Mars, then a total ban on human colonization must be put into place. After all colonization of Africa worked out SO WELL.
Why on earth would anyone want to remove yet another limit to human growth? We don't need more energy, we need to use less energy, period. At its base, this means fewer humans. We simply need to decrease the surplus population of ravenously resource-hungry bourgeoisie. It is incredible that in this day and age, there are still no limits on how many children hetero couples are allowed to conceive. Christian sects encourage their brainwashed followers to have as many children as possible, so as to elbow out the smart people. In a democracy this can only mean bad news. What we really need is a Chinese-style one child policy, or better yet incentives for no children at all. Misusing science to find better ways to exploit the earth for more and more energy will just end in tragedy, because there is no end to the hunger for resources.
Yeah. Going to war worked SO well in Somalia. America got very heavily criticized for military interference in Africa's internal affairs. Citation: PBS. "Less than a year after having been welcomed by the Somali people as heroes, American soldiers were ambushed by Somali men, women, and children." Then, a year later, America didn't use its military to stop the Rwandan genocide, and got the blame for standing by and doing nothing. Don't trust me: listen to PBS. "The Triumph of Evil: How the West Ignored Warnings of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and Turned Its Back on the Victims."
I read this story somewhere on the net. One day, an African newspaper's headline read: "Three Headless Bodies Found".
The next day: "Three Heads Found".
The third day: "Heads Don't Match Bodies".