Science has exploded beyond the ability of writers to manage... It used to be that 50 years ago, you could probably have a smattering of what's new in physics and a few other fields, but right now, what's new in physics is a highly specialized thing and it takes way too much to understand what's even old versus what's new. The baseline education of some high school teaches a mathematics based on a level of calculus that's 100 years old at best, physics that's basically newtonian mechanics and chemistry is just doing the old "let's make break up water trick" when right now scientists are looking at individual atoms.
Not really true. IANQPCOG (I am not a quantum physicist, cosmologist, or geneticist), but I manage to have a cursory knowledge of advances in these fields, and there general structures and histories. Yes, I'd fail at the math, and anyone whose taken beyond the 200 level courses would probably trump me easily, but that isn't the purpose. Yes, it takes some work, I have to read a lot of books, and periodicals, but I find it essential. I think many of us here on/. can say much the same, being nerds and all. Granted my course of interest (and much of my education) was geared towards more scientific subjects (philosophy of science, epistemology).
My father, as an example, is a truck driver, who doesn't have any real education beyond 11th grade. As a child I thought he was barely literate. But he subscribes to Scientific America, Archeology, the USGS state periodical, and many other periodicals. He has no basis in science, but is full of curiosity, and doesn't like being "talked down to". Sure, he doesn't understand all of it, but belies your above paragraph, he is the definition of average, and tries (with good success) to stay ahead on current scientific events.
Its an easy task, if you come equipped with a bit of curiosity. Which is part of the problem, our schools, and society, besides not giving kids the essential intellectual tools, is also not giving them a sense of wonder, and self-driven curiosity. They don't lust for knowledge for its own sake.
What the world needs is a bank of good writers that also know math and physics to go in there and get rid of biographically named crap, and organize things in a more direct and intuitive fashion. For the love of god, you can't let a scientist in the field do it, because they are just terrible at naming and organizing.
I'm not to clear on what your getting at here? Should science be dumbed down for the masses?
By rigorous he means that they weren't afraid of having articles published by actual scientists, discussing their own field. They had rather technical stories on genetics, quantum theory, and cosmology, where the authors were actually writing about their discoveries, and doing so in such a manner as to not talk down to their readers.
Think of it as more than for laymen, but less than reading Nature, it was a good bridge for people who are not completely ignorant (used not as a value judgment but as a quantifier of knowledge) to know more about various fields. I think that is what the parent means by "rigorous", not that the other magazines lie, or have bad reporting, but lack the depth of SciAm.
Yes, it is a pop science magazine, but it always aimed towards a more informed, or sophisticated, audience.
Agreed. And I'm getting sick of its activism, the last big revision completely politicized it as well. Which annoys the hell out of me, since I really don't like my science with a side of politics. I like to read magazines to be informed, so I can make my own opinions, and make the preexisting ones better. When you decided to tell me what to think, you suddenly say "You're too stupid to think for yourself, let me do it for you", which is antithetical to science.
And yes, I happen to agree with many of their political views, I'm mainly disagreeing with the venue. I read Mother Jones for rousing liberalism and my feeble sense of self-justification; I read SciAm to keep abreast with recent scientific developments in a slightly non-technical manner (I do like how their dwindling science content doesn't speak down to laymen either, which is a rarity).
EVERYTHING is getting politicized though. I really can't stand it, its like the whole world is slowly morphing into some idiotic advertising. I even had to stop listening to contemporary rock music with lyrics, because it was trying to tell me what to think, which I think I am more competent at deciding than a rock star.
There really is no pure avenue for "science for the masses" anymore. This History Channel has decided that "reality TV", and cryptozoology/UFOlogy is more its games than... you know... history. While the Discovery Chanel has decided that crap fishing, and other amusing employment opportunities, are really really insightful and educational. TLC is long dead, because now we all know learning means "how to decorate your house, while cooking an omelet with trendy ingredients like sushi and chipotle).
goth chicks... And the original copy of her birth certificate... with out that, she's dead, right?
Making her a better goth?
On a more serious note, does any one care? I'm very happy your in a (slightly) happy relationship, but it doesn't matter, a lot of other people are as well. If you can't be happy without telling others, then you probably aren't happy.
A) That went over your head, go rent The Princess Bride, and hand in your geek card.
B) Regardless of costume, anyone trying to be a super-hero in today's world be laughed at, and promptly arrested of vigilantism. You could be wearing a nice suit and a tie, but the second you thew a bus at someone you merely suspect of being the bad guy (Mr. Autobusaphobic, for example), you'd be breaking several laws, and violating the super villains rights.
Somewhat off-topic, but this brings up some interesting dilemmas. If, in the next administration, we had to pick one monolithic project (looking at this as a zero-sum game for sake of discussion), which would you pick? Manned space exploration, novel transportation infrastructure, or something green (rolling out a ton of reactors and renewables). I would argue that all this money should into EXISTING infrastructure. Our last big projects were 30 or so years in the past, and age is beginning to show.
Sadly Republicans (of the modern type) have decided maintenance and upkeep is pork (don't know what the Democrats' excuse is), and because of this our highway, plumbing, and bridge systems are becoming slowly broken, and unsafe.
Why invest billions to get people to the moon when we should allocate that money to problems at home?
I also would be a fan of an initiative the size of WPA or the highway initiative devoted to weening us from oil. I would say that it would be more pressing, as well, than getting us to the moon (not just for environmental reasons, either).
I'm conflicted, I'm a geek, therefore I WANT to see us in space, but the pragmatist in me tells me that we should be focusing on more pressing problems. I'm also fearful that politics are going to bungle the development of post-shuttle technologies, and we're going to be stuck with NO manned space capabilities for a long time. Which would be a tragedy.
Ah... the good old "nature vs. nurture" debate. We still haven't learned that there is probably a good balance between them. In regular genetics we are perfectly capable of applying the idea that organisms have a phenotype and a genotype, both of which are independent, but closely linked. But we still can't grasp this in psychology yet.
Yes, our brains are predisposed to various things. Men and women have had different roles in the evolutionary context, so it makes sense that there are differences in wiring, and predisposition. BUT... Humans are social animals, and much of our development is soft-wired by society, learning, and our environment. We have both a psychological phenotype (nurture), and a psychological genotype (nature), but are important, and neither are the be-all-end-all answer.
Our innate mental states are rather soft and malleable, this is one of the things that allowed us to be successful, and was a pretty interesting evolutionary move. We can't just say "we evolved thus, and thus we are" though. Look at the varying gender roles throughout our history as a species, now try to find "hard" lines to draw between them, you will notice that this is very difficult, since much of "gender roles" is cultural, and changes though time. Saying that the status quo is how things are naturally is rather short sighted.
While I'd generally agree with you, I will move to strike Pan's Labrynth from your list. I didn't enjoy the movie, but it really was somewhat different from your usual Hollywood clone fair. My first reaction was that it was just more of the girl-fantasy-escapism genre (Mirrormask, Labyrinth, etc...), but I must say it was much too dark to fit into that cliche, and did pull of a nice psychological component, which is pretty rare these days.
Again, it wasn't my favorite movie, and I personally could live without ever watching it again, but... I realize that this is my completely subjective opinion, and has no basis on anyone else's.
What, then, in your opinion, is original? The only movie in theaters, right now, that I want to see is Mongol, and that is HARDLY original. Everything else is a sequel, formulaic, or a rehash, as has been true for the last couple years. Hell the last good movie I've seen in recent memory (No Country For Old Men) was based on a bestselling novel, so not even it was original (nor as good as the book).
To some degree there is a conspiracy. Agribusiness, and GM companies (Monsanto) have huge lobbies, and throw massive amounts of money at our congresscritters (in the US, obviously). There has been a huge fight over whether or not to label foods containing GM ingredients. Notice too how all organic dairy products (not containing BGH) have a label saying that "BGH is fine and dandy, but we don't have it, but still, its not bad".
I always found this debate insipid. Why shouldn't GM products be labeled? If people have a problem with it, then they won't buy it, if they don't (or even prefer it) they will. This is how markets work. A market based on enforced ignorance is rather moronic. How can one actually argue against labeling food?
I'm personally against unchained GM. Food is VERY important, and any changes we make to it should be researched, and properly labeled, and most importantly, heavily inspected and regulated. Oddly, the US has decided that food isn't that important, so has stopped even inspecting it. A few public health disasters are perfectly fine, since regulation is ALWAYS bad, or so the logic states. Somehow this ideology is more important than human health.
The legal issue is also rather dubious, cross pollination happens, so being downwind from GM crops is legally dangerous.
The US is downright moronic about their food crops, I really can't point to a single good policy, we even think its a good idea to have fuel compete with food. We often underestimate the power of the agricultural lobby, who really don't have OUR (as in "We the People") interests in their heads, only their own (as in their pocket books), which generally is dimetrically opposed to safe, healthy, or beneficial to anyone but them.
But then again I'm bitter that you can't find a good ear of sweet corn (WAY too sweet), or tasty tomato (also WAY to sweet) in the US anymore.
We, your fine Government, resent the term "Invasion of Privacy", since the term "invasion" sounds like a negative action. We, to remove all negative connotations from out ethical, justifiable, and beneficent actions, would prefer the term "Privacy Sharing". Keep in mind that this term is only for interim use until we purge the term "privacy" from the public lexicon, and henceforth re-brand it to "Anti-Child Terrorist Obfuscation Layer".
All they really need to do to slow it is start suing users and the rest will run scared, like they did with Kazaa et al. Real pirates will go underground, for sure, but they wont have as much of an impact on sales as say, Napster.
I rather doubt that this will happen. When Napster got killed, all the kids moved to Kazaa, and when that started getting fishy they moved on to BT and directly hosted goods (Rapidshare, and Megaupload). I seriously doubt that there has ever been a drop in the file sharing community (pirates). When I was in college (piracy Mecca), I never met one person who was actually frightened of piracy because of the actions of the **AA. The ones who were used rather untraceable means such as OurTunes and local DC++ networks.
If the **AAs destroy BT, with a combination of ISP cooperation and bought legislators, something else will pop up, like it always has. Perhaps things will move towards more direct downloads, which is actually more convenient than BT for small files (such as albums), and generally concentrates the blame on one person, since downloading still is a gray area. If that person is in a place with looser piracy laws, then it is a risk free method.
It would be a shame though, since BT is a generally useful idea for many things outside of piracy (Linux distros, patching, etc...).
I stopped my piracy activities after college, so there might be something in the works right now. Like many things this game is ruled by adaptive evolution, whenever the anti crowd advances, the pro crowd gets more sophisticated.
I've always loved religions dual punch on mortality and afterlife. On one hand they claim that this life is crap, and that there is something really awesome and special on the other side. But then they claim that you must live through this crap, your not allowed to use your get out of jail free card.
I always wondered how long religions with a strong concept of an afterlife would survive without the prohibitions against suicide.
Another fun bit is the emerging view among the fundamentalist crowd, that this life is crap, the next one is awesome, so who cares what we do to this one. Or conversely, the creepy view that they should try to BRING ABOUT the end of this world (second coming). Couldn't this be seen as just another form of suicide, where the radical fundamentalist crowd is trying to kill the rest of us, and thus forcing god's hand, which could be as big a no-no as individual suicide?
I'm more disturbed by the costs here in the mortal realm, screw your soul, and land of milk and honey, the rest of us have to (or want to) live here.
Back on topic; I often wonder if ideas such as this (and the "singularity", "transhumanism", etc...) are nothing but religions for atheists. Rationalism doesn't fill the hole which leads to the development of religions, and ideas of afterlives. Death is still scary, and still is the great unknowable wall outside of our experience. We still must have some deep yearning to make sense of that monolithic event, and no amount of rationalism, and skepticism can fix that.
It all boils down to the fact that we are incapable of actually understanding a world without us as the center of experience, and meaning. The universe is always seen (subjectively) as in the context of ourselves, thus the universe is meaningless without us. We must rectify this, psychologically.
In 5-8 year BLizzard will lose there rep of releasing fnished high quality games. You'll see.
I rather doubt this. Blizzard is, for all intents and purposes, a bunch of assholes, and I mean this in a good way. I'm guessing if too much pressure is put on them to bow to some corporate line, they will all just leave. I don't think that Chris Metzen is much for outside influence, or compromise, he'd probably quit (and take most of the design team with him) if anyone tried to mess with his freedom. As would most of the people there.
For some odd reason I don't think that Bliz is a bunch of good capitalists, I think that they really view themselves as artists, and industry rockstars. Not saying they don't like their money, but I think there are some deeper motivations going on as well.
I also doubt that anyone will really mess with this Goose, Bliz is WAY to lucrative to fiddle with. Nothing they have released since the mid 90's, hasn't made money. Two of their games still sell more than some other releases over ten years later (Diablo 2, and Starcraft), which is pretty rare in the game industry.
From all that I read, Activision and Blizzard will remain separately operating, independent, operating branches of the new Activision-Blizzard. No changes will happen (according to the corporate overlords) to Bliz, they will remain autonomous.
This makes sense, you don't mess with anything that makes as much money as Blizzard (ignoring the plight of Squenix). I think most of their games were best sellers within their genres (by a margin), and then you have WoW, which equals pure money. You'd have to be absolutely insane to mess with them.
Part of this is wishful thinking, I want my Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.
Society is not a person, and has no will, as it is a collective of individuals, and all of their merits and faults. I, as a person, won't allow people to be jerks to me, or to others (unless they deserve it), I would prefer that society would not, as a legal whole, look out for this. It isn't the government's job to make us act civil to each other.
Should/. trolls be federally prosecuted? What about griefers in online games? Bullies? Good old-fashioned unPC bar banter? The goal of government is NOT to make a utopia, it is to uphold the rights of others, and to keep them from infringing on the rights of others (and infrastructure, defense, and trade, obviously), but not to make sure we all are NICE to each other.
This girl, while the case is rather sad, was obviously not well, nor were the Columbine asshats. They are abnormal. Probably a sizable majority of us here on/. were picked on in school, and how many of us killed ourselves (none), and how many tried to massacre their school? People who react like this are a very small, and ill, minority. Protecting them at the cost of the majority is just silly, and dangerous.
If violent media is proven to affect a small percentage of the population adversely, then why CAN'T they be banned? If a small percentage of people are allergic to peanuts, should they be banned? Probably not.
The girl who committed suicide made a choice, this other woman didn't kill her, nor FORCE her to commit suicide. Yes, this lady isn't a nice person, and is probably guilty of something, the other girl made a choice, still. Blame is shared.
If I call you a jerk for whatever reason, and you go home and kick your dog, am I at fault?
Then charger her with murder, or wrongful death, or being a bitch, don't throw random extra charges into the mix for "image" or "revenge". It sets a bad precedent, though probably an unenforceable one (how many people actually ever use their real names names online?).
Not following a ToS is in no way a felony, it is simple breach of contract, and thus a civil matter. Most courts probably wouldn't even hear it, since there is a VERY easy way of enforcement, banning people using pseudonyms (even if this is 50% of your user base).
This is out of touch, much of the history of the internet is based around people using handles and aliases, it never really matched the "real-world" model of identity, and probably never will. Trying to force it into this paradigm is just silly. Outside of my bank and university, my real name is no where represented online, not even MySpace or Facebook.
That really wasn't a comment against hunting. More against torturing animals for sport. I don't know many hunters who shoot for painful wounds, and long deaths. Hunting wasn't, last time I checked, about causing suffering for the sake of fun.
Hunting is now a necessary function, even if hide and meat (which is necissary) is not. We've destroyed all of the other apex preditors, so something needs to keep the populations in check.
I don't hunt, nor do I ever want to. I don't have anything against most hunters (if they are well behaved, and realize that often the land their filling with lead is used by other people as well). But painting me as "city folk" because I don't enjoy killing things is a bit much. You don't know my background, so please refrain from painting me into one.
I dislike PETA as much as the next guy, but your taking this a bit far.
My pets panic on the fourth and on New Years. I live in suburbia like most people. How many people ACTUALLY have hunting dogs? Really? What percentage?
Not many, anymore, I'd guess, times have moved on.
Just because a sport has a traditions, doesn't make it okay. Bullfighting and Cockfighting stretch back a bit, therefore throwing Christians to the lions and gladiatorial combat should be fine too? Should Human sacrifice also be fine just because its traditional to certain cultures? Times move on, as do values, this is generally considered a good thing.
I don't find torturing animals for our amusement fine, just because some idiotic older cultures did so. Hurting animals for our amusement is idiotic, do we really need to cause pain to be happy? I would consider this a sad bit of evidence for humanity.
Sure, animals should be for food, and skins, but killing them for shits and giggles is kind of dubious.
If we can make environmentally friendly fireworks, I really don't see any reason to get pissed. Just as I don't see any reason to get mad at prohibiting seeing other entities pain (for its own sake) as a bad thing.
There is a prevalent thought in politics that you are here to represent the people, BUT the people don't know whats good for them. Thus your here to protect them from themselves. The people, the reasoning goes, are fickle and self-destructive. While you think sitting around downloading MP3s and smoking your marijuana is a-okay, they think that this is further proof that you need to be protected.
In other words, the People (as in "We the...") are generally short-sighted, dumb, misguided by immediate (and idiotic) concerns/distractions, and therefore elect us to worry about them.
The people, the reasoning further goes, NEED a big brother to look out for them.
This isn't really a liberal issues, NOR a conservative one, but a modern politics one.
We can see this in the liberal nanny state devoid of guns, porn, racist talk, and violent video games, as well in the conservative nanny state of Protestant Extremist "Family" values, devoid of gays, porn, violent video games, abortions, the separation clause, open science, and any support for anyone not worth $1M or owning a corporation.
See also: the war on terror. We need to be SAFE, first and foremost. Their job is to protect us little ignorant plebes.
They KNOW better, and have moronic dogmatic ideologies to back it up. This is probably through a divorce with the common person that they are supposed to represent, and a full lack of common experience/history with the majority of their constituents. I'm guessing that blind dogma is also a problem in itself, since I hear many non-rich, non-power-elites spouting the same various "nanny" values, and offering the same disdain for everyone else.
Perhaps we ALL lost sight of humanity, and civilized society long ago.
But, if you didn't show the bottle, or price, or any other identifiable information, you'd have a valid test. If I showed you a HDTV with a tag saying $1,000, and one saying $100, I'm guessing you would prefer the $1,000, most people would, even if identical. If I put a 10 year old, $100 cab into a bottle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Chuck into a fancy bottle, then most people would prefer the crappy wine in the good bottle.
If, though, I hid the bottle, and presentation, then you come closer to validity.
As I stated here, earlier, in college I was in the HRM (hotel and resturant management) program's wine club. My first semester we got all the stats of the wine, and the expensive one always turned up top ranking (by about 30 people, most of whom were experienced, or going to school for bar&bev). The next semester we switched to a blind system, where the only people who knew the wines before hand was the department's head Sommelier (who ran the on-campus 5 star restaurant), and the head of the club. The rankings were more inconsistant (a $9 Sonoma merlot tied with a $100 french one), but generally still skewed towards the high prices, ESPECIALLY with reds and ports/sherries. About 90% of the time, in the blind study, the most expensive bottle was in the top 2.
I would say they are worth MORE, since they now can be considered "high" art, and not just entertainment. For some reason art is tied into lack of utility, the more "pure art" something is, the more value it has.
Have you seen many paintings depreciating in value lately because of advances in photography and hi-def crap? Probably not. Notice the price differences between a painting made recently, versus the same painting 50 years later. But then again, I haven't noticed the amount of artists decreasing either. Galleries are still a valid form of entertainment as well (I spend a fair amount of time in them, better them than movies). Has a Model T dropped in price because of modern pickups?
If someone reproduced a modern Stradivarius, I doubt we would see much a change in the price of the originals, if anything it might jump a bit. They are historical artifacts covered in mystique, no mere copy (no matter how perfect) can take that away.
Another thing science has taught me, is that I will generally always trust an expert over a layman, ESPECIALLY in their field of expertise.
If most violinists say that a Stradivarius sounds better, I'm generally inclined to listen to them over someone with no musical training. Same thing with wine and beer, I know someone who owns a vineyard/winery whose whole life is devoted to wine, and wine tasting, I trust his tastes over my own (our preferences can differ, but I listen). I, myself, have sampled 1,000s of different beers as a... er... hobby, so I think my tastes are more refined that someone who has only drank American piss-beer, but then again professional beer tasters probably know MUCH more than me.
But then again I take for granted that physicists know more about physics than me, and psychologists know more about that than me.
Not all things fall into the domain of science. Why is a Picasso better than your six year old's fridge drawings? I doubt science will have much to say about that in the near future (if ever). Not all things non-scientific are purely subjective either.
Is a bottle of Stella Artois better than a bottle of Bud Lite? Yes. Can science tell me why? Probably not.
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Science has exploded beyond the ability of writers to manage... It used to be that 50 years ago, you could probably have a smattering of what's new in physics and a few other fields, but right now, what's new in physics is a highly specialized thing and it takes way too much to understand what's even old versus what's new. The baseline education of some high school teaches a mathematics based on a level of calculus that's 100 years old at best, physics that's basically newtonian mechanics and chemistry is just doing the old "let's make break up water trick" when right now scientists are looking at individual atoms.
Not really true. IANQPCOG (I am not a quantum physicist, cosmologist, or geneticist), but I manage to have a cursory knowledge of advances in these fields, and there general structures and histories. Yes, I'd fail at the math, and anyone whose taken beyond the 200 level courses would probably trump me easily, but that isn't the purpose. Yes, it takes some work, I have to read a lot of books, and periodicals, but I find it essential. I think many of us here on /. can say much the same, being nerds and all. Granted my course of interest (and much of my education) was geared towards more scientific subjects (philosophy of science, epistemology).
My father, as an example, is a truck driver, who doesn't have any real education beyond 11th grade. As a child I thought he was barely literate. But he subscribes to Scientific America, Archeology, the USGS state periodical, and many other periodicals. He has no basis in science, but is full of curiosity, and doesn't like being "talked down to". Sure, he doesn't understand all of it, but belies your above paragraph, he is the definition of average, and tries (with good success) to stay ahead on current scientific events.
Its an easy task, if you come equipped with a bit of curiosity. Which is part of the problem, our schools, and society, besides not giving kids the essential intellectual tools, is also not giving them a sense of wonder, and self-driven curiosity. They don't lust for knowledge for its own sake.
What the world needs is a bank of good writers that also know math and physics to go in there and get rid of biographically named crap, and organize things in a more direct and intuitive fashion. For the love of god, you can't let a scientist in the field do it, because they are just terrible at naming and organizing.
I'm not to clear on what your getting at here? Should science be dumbed down for the masses?
By rigorous he means that they weren't afraid of having articles published by actual scientists, discussing their own field. They had rather technical stories on genetics, quantum theory, and cosmology, where the authors were actually writing about their discoveries, and doing so in such a manner as to not talk down to their readers.
Think of it as more than for laymen, but less than reading Nature, it was a good bridge for people who are not completely ignorant (used not as a value judgment but as a quantifier of knowledge) to know more about various fields. I think that is what the parent means by "rigorous", not that the other magazines lie, or have bad reporting, but lack the depth of SciAm.
Yes, it is a pop science magazine, but it always aimed towards a more informed, or sophisticated, audience.
Agreed. And I'm getting sick of its activism, the last big revision completely politicized it as well. Which annoys the hell out of me, since I really don't like my science with a side of politics. I like to read magazines to be informed, so I can make my own opinions, and make the preexisting ones better. When you decided to tell me what to think, you suddenly say "You're too stupid to think for yourself, let me do it for you", which is antithetical to science.
And yes, I happen to agree with many of their political views, I'm mainly disagreeing with the venue. I read Mother Jones for rousing liberalism and my feeble sense of self-justification; I read SciAm to keep abreast with recent scientific developments in a slightly non-technical manner (I do like how their dwindling science content doesn't speak down to laymen either, which is a rarity).
EVERYTHING is getting politicized though. I really can't stand it, its like the whole world is slowly morphing into some idiotic advertising. I even had to stop listening to contemporary rock music with lyrics, because it was trying to tell me what to think, which I think I am more competent at deciding than a rock star.
There really is no pure avenue for "science for the masses" anymore. This History Channel has decided that "reality TV", and cryptozoology/UFOlogy is more its games than... you know... history. While the Discovery Chanel has decided that crap fishing, and other amusing employment opportunities, are really really insightful and educational. TLC is long dead, because now we all know learning means "how to decorate your house, while cooking an omelet with trendy ingredients like sushi and chipotle).
We're getting stupider, news at 11.
goth chicks... And the original copy of her birth certificate... with out that, she's dead, right?
Making her a better goth?
On a more serious note, does any one care? I'm very happy your in a (slightly) happy relationship, but it doesn't matter, a lot of other people are as well. If you can't be happy without telling others, then you probably aren't happy.
A) That went over your head, go rent The Princess Bride, and hand in your geek card.
B) Regardless of costume, anyone trying to be a super-hero in today's world be laughed at, and promptly arrested of vigilantism. You could be wearing a nice suit and a tie, but the second you thew a bus at someone you merely suspect of being the bad guy (Mr. Autobusaphobic, for example), you'd be breaking several laws, and violating the super villains rights.
Somewhat off-topic, but this brings up some interesting dilemmas. If, in the next administration, we had to pick one monolithic project (looking at this as a zero-sum game for sake of discussion), which would you pick? Manned space exploration, novel transportation infrastructure, or something green (rolling out a ton of reactors and renewables). I would argue that all this money should into EXISTING infrastructure. Our last big projects were 30 or so years in the past, and age is beginning to show.
Sadly Republicans (of the modern type) have decided maintenance and upkeep is pork (don't know what the Democrats' excuse is), and because of this our highway, plumbing, and bridge systems are becoming slowly broken, and unsafe.
Why invest billions to get people to the moon when we should allocate that money to problems at home?
I also would be a fan of an initiative the size of WPA or the highway initiative devoted to weening us from oil. I would say that it would be more pressing, as well, than getting us to the moon (not just for environmental reasons, either).
I'm conflicted, I'm a geek, therefore I WANT to see us in space, but the pragmatist in me tells me that we should be focusing on more pressing problems. I'm also fearful that politics are going to bungle the development of post-shuttle technologies, and we're going to be stuck with NO manned space capabilities for a long time. Which would be a tragedy.
Ah... the good old "nature vs. nurture" debate. We still haven't learned that there is probably a good balance between them. In regular genetics we are perfectly capable of applying the idea that organisms have a phenotype and a genotype, both of which are independent, but closely linked. But we still can't grasp this in psychology yet.
Yes, our brains are predisposed to various things. Men and women have had different roles in the evolutionary context, so it makes sense that there are differences in wiring, and predisposition. BUT... Humans are social animals, and much of our development is soft-wired by society, learning, and our environment. We have both a psychological phenotype (nurture), and a psychological genotype (nature), but are important, and neither are the be-all-end-all answer.
Our innate mental states are rather soft and malleable, this is one of the things that allowed us to be successful, and was a pretty interesting evolutionary move. We can't just say "we evolved thus, and thus we are" though. Look at the varying gender roles throughout our history as a species, now try to find "hard" lines to draw between them, you will notice that this is very difficult, since much of "gender roles" is cultural, and changes though time. Saying that the status quo is how things are naturally is rather short sighted.
While I'd generally agree with you, I will move to strike Pan's Labrynth from your list. I didn't enjoy the movie, but it really was somewhat different from your usual Hollywood clone fair. My first reaction was that it was just more of the girl-fantasy-escapism genre (Mirrormask, Labyrinth, etc...), but I must say it was much too dark to fit into that cliche, and did pull of a nice psychological component, which is pretty rare these days.
Again, it wasn't my favorite movie, and I personally could live without ever watching it again, but... I realize that this is my completely subjective opinion, and has no basis on anyone else's.
What, then, in your opinion, is original? The only movie in theaters, right now, that I want to see is Mongol, and that is HARDLY original. Everything else is a sequel, formulaic, or a rehash, as has been true for the last couple years. Hell the last good movie I've seen in recent memory (No Country For Old Men) was based on a bestselling novel, so not even it was original (nor as good as the book).
To some degree there is a conspiracy. Agribusiness, and GM companies (Monsanto) have huge lobbies, and throw massive amounts of money at our congresscritters (in the US, obviously). There has been a huge fight over whether or not to label foods containing GM ingredients. Notice too how all organic dairy products (not containing BGH) have a label saying that "BGH is fine and dandy, but we don't have it, but still, its not bad".
I always found this debate insipid. Why shouldn't GM products be labeled? If people have a problem with it, then they won't buy it, if they don't (or even prefer it) they will. This is how markets work. A market based on enforced ignorance is rather moronic. How can one actually argue against labeling food?
I'm personally against unchained GM. Food is VERY important, and any changes we make to it should be researched, and properly labeled, and most importantly, heavily inspected and regulated. Oddly, the US has decided that food isn't that important, so has stopped even inspecting it. A few public health disasters are perfectly fine, since regulation is ALWAYS bad, or so the logic states. Somehow this ideology is more important than human health.
The legal issue is also rather dubious, cross pollination happens, so being downwind from GM crops is legally dangerous.
The US is downright moronic about their food crops, I really can't point to a single good policy, we even think its a good idea to have fuel compete with food. We often underestimate the power of the agricultural lobby, who really don't have OUR (as in "We the People") interests in their heads, only their own (as in their pocket books), which generally is dimetrically opposed to safe, healthy, or beneficial to anyone but them.
But then again I'm bitter that you can't find a good ear of sweet corn (WAY too sweet), or tasty tomato (also WAY to sweet) in the US anymore.
We, your fine Government, resent the term "Invasion of Privacy", since the term "invasion" sounds like a negative action. We, to remove all negative connotations from out ethical, justifiable, and beneficent actions, would prefer the term "Privacy Sharing". Keep in mind that this term is only for interim use until we purge the term "privacy" from the public lexicon, and henceforth re-brand it to "Anti-Child Terrorist Obfuscation Layer".
Thank you for your cooperation,
Your Humble Gov't
All they really need to do to slow it is start suing users and the rest will run scared, like they did with Kazaa et al. Real pirates will go underground, for sure, but they wont have as much of an impact on sales as say, Napster.
I rather doubt that this will happen. When Napster got killed, all the kids moved to Kazaa, and when that started getting fishy they moved on to BT and directly hosted goods (Rapidshare, and Megaupload). I seriously doubt that there has ever been a drop in the file sharing community (pirates). When I was in college (piracy Mecca), I never met one person who was actually frightened of piracy because of the actions of the **AA. The ones who were used rather untraceable means such as OurTunes and local DC++ networks.
If the **AAs destroy BT, with a combination of ISP cooperation and bought legislators, something else will pop up, like it always has. Perhaps things will move towards more direct downloads, which is actually more convenient than BT for small files (such as albums), and generally concentrates the blame on one person, since downloading still is a gray area. If that person is in a place with looser piracy laws, then it is a risk free method.
It would be a shame though, since BT is a generally useful idea for many things outside of piracy (Linux distros, patching, etc...).
I stopped my piracy activities after college, so there might be something in the works right now. Like many things this game is ruled by adaptive evolution, whenever the anti crowd advances, the pro crowd gets more sophisticated.
I've always loved religions dual punch on mortality and afterlife. On one hand they claim that this life is crap, and that there is something really awesome and special on the other side. But then they claim that you must live through this crap, your not allowed to use your get out of jail free card.
I always wondered how long religions with a strong concept of an afterlife would survive without the prohibitions against suicide.
Another fun bit is the emerging view among the fundamentalist crowd, that this life is crap, the next one is awesome, so who cares what we do to this one. Or conversely, the creepy view that they should try to BRING ABOUT the end of this world (second coming). Couldn't this be seen as just another form of suicide, where the radical fundamentalist crowd is trying to kill the rest of us, and thus forcing god's hand, which could be as big a no-no as individual suicide?
I'm more disturbed by the costs here in the mortal realm, screw your soul, and land of milk and honey, the rest of us have to (or want to) live here.
Back on topic; I often wonder if ideas such as this (and the "singularity", "transhumanism", etc...) are nothing but religions for atheists. Rationalism doesn't fill the hole which leads to the development of religions, and ideas of afterlives. Death is still scary, and still is the great unknowable wall outside of our experience. We still must have some deep yearning to make sense of that monolithic event, and no amount of rationalism, and skepticism can fix that.
It all boils down to the fact that we are incapable of actually understanding a world without us as the center of experience, and meaning. The universe is always seen (subjectively) as in the context of ourselves, thus the universe is meaningless without us. We must rectify this, psychologically.
In 5-8 year BLizzard will lose there rep of releasing fnished high quality games. You'll see.
I rather doubt this. Blizzard is, for all intents and purposes, a bunch of assholes, and I mean this in a good way. I'm guessing if too much pressure is put on them to bow to some corporate line, they will all just leave. I don't think that Chris Metzen is much for outside influence, or compromise, he'd probably quit (and take most of the design team with him) if anyone tried to mess with his freedom. As would most of the people there.
For some odd reason I don't think that Bliz is a bunch of good capitalists, I think that they really view themselves as artists, and industry rockstars. Not saying they don't like their money, but I think there are some deeper motivations going on as well.
I also doubt that anyone will really mess with this Goose, Bliz is WAY to lucrative to fiddle with. Nothing they have released since the mid 90's, hasn't made money. Two of their games still sell more than some other releases over ten years later (Diablo 2, and Starcraft), which is pretty rare in the game industry.
Yes, I am a Bliz fanboy. :)
From all that I read, Activision and Blizzard will remain separately operating, independent, operating branches of the new Activision-Blizzard. No changes will happen (according to the corporate overlords) to Bliz, they will remain autonomous.
This makes sense, you don't mess with anything that makes as much money as Blizzard (ignoring the plight of Squenix). I think most of their games were best sellers within their genres (by a margin), and then you have WoW, which equals pure money. You'd have to be absolutely insane to mess with them.
Part of this is wishful thinking, I want my Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.
Man, always trying to get the nightshade man down...
Damn rubynecks.
There is a flaw in your thinking here.
Society is not a person, and has no will, as it is a collective of individuals, and all of their merits and faults. I, as a person, won't allow people to be jerks to me, or to others (unless they deserve it), I would prefer that society would not, as a legal whole, look out for this. It isn't the government's job to make us act civil to each other.
Should /. trolls be federally prosecuted? What about griefers in online games? Bullies? Good old-fashioned unPC bar banter? The goal of government is NOT to make a utopia, it is to uphold the rights of others, and to keep them from infringing on the rights of others (and infrastructure, defense, and trade, obviously), but not to make sure we all are NICE to each other.
This girl, while the case is rather sad, was obviously not well, nor were the Columbine asshats. They are abnormal. Probably a sizable majority of us here on /. were picked on in school, and how many of us killed ourselves (none), and how many tried to massacre their school? People who react like this are a very small, and ill, minority. Protecting them at the cost of the majority is just silly, and dangerous.
If violent media is proven to affect a small percentage of the population adversely, then why CAN'T they be banned? If a small percentage of people are allergic to peanuts, should they be banned? Probably not.
The girl who committed suicide made a choice, this other woman didn't kill her, nor FORCE her to commit suicide. Yes, this lady isn't a nice person, and is probably guilty of something, the other girl made a choice, still. Blame is shared.
If I call you a jerk for whatever reason, and you go home and kick your dog, am I at fault?
Then charger her with murder, or wrongful death, or being a bitch, don't throw random extra charges into the mix for "image" or "revenge". It sets a bad precedent, though probably an unenforceable one (how many people actually ever use their real names names online?).
Not following a ToS is in no way a felony, it is simple breach of contract, and thus a civil matter. Most courts probably wouldn't even hear it, since there is a VERY easy way of enforcement, banning people using pseudonyms (even if this is 50% of your user base).
This is out of touch, much of the history of the internet is based around people using handles and aliases, it never really matched the "real-world" model of identity, and probably never will. Trying to force it into this paradigm is just silly. Outside of my bank and university, my real name is no where represented online, not even MySpace or Facebook.
That really wasn't a comment against hunting. More against torturing animals for sport. I don't know many hunters who shoot for painful wounds, and long deaths. Hunting wasn't, last time I checked, about causing suffering for the sake of fun.
Hunting is now a necessary function, even if hide and meat (which is necissary) is not. We've destroyed all of the other apex preditors, so something needs to keep the populations in check.
I don't hunt, nor do I ever want to. I don't have anything against most hunters (if they are well behaved, and realize that often the land their filling with lead is used by other people as well). But painting me as "city folk" because I don't enjoy killing things is a bit much. You don't know my background, so please refrain from painting me into one.
Exaggerate much?
I dislike PETA as much as the next guy, but your taking this a bit far.
My pets panic on the fourth and on New Years. I live in suburbia like most people. How many people ACTUALLY have hunting dogs? Really? What percentage?
Not many, anymore, I'd guess, times have moved on.
Just because a sport has a traditions, doesn't make it okay. Bullfighting and Cockfighting stretch back a bit, therefore throwing Christians to the lions and gladiatorial combat should be fine too? Should Human sacrifice also be fine just because its traditional to certain cultures? Times move on, as do values, this is generally considered a good thing.
I don't find torturing animals for our amusement fine, just because some idiotic older cultures did so. Hurting animals for our amusement is idiotic, do we really need to cause pain to be happy? I would consider this a sad bit of evidence for humanity.
Sure, animals should be for food, and skins, but killing them for shits and giggles is kind of dubious.
If we can make environmentally friendly fireworks, I really don't see any reason to get pissed. Just as I don't see any reason to get mad at prohibiting seeing other entities pain (for its own sake) as a bad thing.
There is a prevalent thought in politics that you are here to represent the people, BUT the people don't know whats good for them. Thus your here to protect them from themselves. The people, the reasoning goes, are fickle and self-destructive. While you think sitting around downloading MP3s and smoking your marijuana is a-okay, they think that this is further proof that you need to be protected.
In other words, the People (as in "We the...") are generally short-sighted, dumb, misguided by immediate (and idiotic) concerns/distractions, and therefore elect us to worry about them.
The people, the reasoning further goes, NEED a big brother to look out for them.
This isn't really a liberal issues, NOR a conservative one, but a modern politics one.
We can see this in the liberal nanny state devoid of guns, porn, racist talk, and violent video games, as well in the conservative nanny state of Protestant Extremist "Family" values, devoid of gays, porn, violent video games, abortions, the separation clause, open science, and any support for anyone not worth $1M or owning a corporation.
See also: the war on terror. We need to be SAFE, first and foremost. Their job is to protect us little ignorant plebes.
They KNOW better, and have moronic dogmatic ideologies to back it up. This is probably through a divorce with the common person that they are supposed to represent, and a full lack of common experience/history with the majority of their constituents. I'm guessing that blind dogma is also a problem in itself, since I hear many non-rich, non-power-elites spouting the same various "nanny" values, and offering the same disdain for everyone else.
Perhaps we ALL lost sight of humanity, and civilized society long ago.
86400/1440/24/7/365.2425/52?
But what of the Thirteenth Step: Relapse?
Where is your god now!?
But, if you didn't show the bottle, or price, or any other identifiable information, you'd have a valid test. If I showed you a HDTV with a tag saying $1,000, and one saying $100, I'm guessing you would prefer the $1,000, most people would, even if identical. If I put a 10 year old, $100 cab into a bottle of Two Buck Chuck, and the Chuck into a fancy bottle, then most people would prefer the crappy wine in the good bottle.
If, though, I hid the bottle, and presentation, then you come closer to validity.
As I stated here, earlier, in college I was in the HRM (hotel and resturant management) program's wine club. My first semester we got all the stats of the wine, and the expensive one always turned up top ranking (by about 30 people, most of whom were experienced, or going to school for bar&bev). The next semester we switched to a blind system, where the only people who knew the wines before hand was the department's head Sommelier (who ran the on-campus 5 star restaurant), and the head of the club. The rankings were more inconsistant (a $9 Sonoma merlot tied with a $100 french one), but generally still skewed towards the high prices, ESPECIALLY with reds and ports/sherries. About 90% of the time, in the blind study, the most expensive bottle was in the top 2.
I would say they are worth MORE, since they now can be considered "high" art, and not just entertainment. For some reason art is tied into lack of utility, the more "pure art" something is, the more value it has.
Have you seen many paintings depreciating in value lately because of advances in photography and hi-def crap? Probably not. Notice the price differences between a painting made recently, versus the same painting 50 years later. But then again, I haven't noticed the amount of artists decreasing either. Galleries are still a valid form of entertainment as well (I spend a fair amount of time in them, better them than movies). Has a Model T dropped in price because of modern pickups?
If someone reproduced a modern Stradivarius, I doubt we would see much a change in the price of the originals, if anything it might jump a bit. They are historical artifacts covered in mystique, no mere copy (no matter how perfect) can take that away.
Not all value is from utility.
Another thing science has taught me, is that I will generally always trust an expert over a layman, ESPECIALLY in their field of expertise.
If most violinists say that a Stradivarius sounds better, I'm generally inclined to listen to them over someone with no musical training. Same thing with wine and beer, I know someone who owns a vineyard/winery whose whole life is devoted to wine, and wine tasting, I trust his tastes over my own (our preferences can differ, but I listen). I, myself, have sampled 1,000s of different beers as a... er... hobby, so I think my tastes are more refined that someone who has only drank American piss-beer, but then again professional beer tasters probably know MUCH more than me.
But then again I take for granted that physicists know more about physics than me, and psychologists know more about that than me.
Not all things fall into the domain of science. Why is a Picasso better than your six year old's fridge drawings? I doubt science will have much to say about that in the near future (if ever). Not all things non-scientific are purely subjective either.
Is a bottle of Stella Artois better than a bottle of Bud Lite? Yes. Can science tell me why? Probably not.