Recommend "Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" instead. That book was DAMN creepy, though beautifully written. No Country For Old Men was also good, as was "The Crossing", which also was haunting, but dark.
Not science books though. I like the "Einstein File", "The Mismeasure of Man" (can't go wrong with Gould), and the book on eugenics by the guy who wrote "IBM and the Holocaust". Good cautionary, or eye opening, tales of when science gets mixed with politics, for good or ill (ill for mankind, or Einstein's reputation)
As for more "pure" science, "G.E.B." is up there, I recommend it to anyone who can sit through it without bleeding through their ears. Sagan's Demon Haunted World, and Dragon's of Eden are also winners (anything by Sagan, like Gould, is gonna be good). "The World Without Us" was also brilliant, even if contentious.
I agree on the compromise bit, but it should be a slowly shifting compromise to wean us off of fossil fuels, and not a long-term investment to perpetuate this fiasco. No matter how you split it (ecologically, economically, geopolitically, or socially) our increasing dependence on oil (and fossil fuels in general) is a bad habit we should be working on removing. Increases in yield is/should be a stop-gap measure at best for moving towards a network of better sources of energy.
Therefore, a balance between conservation and practical use must be found. At one point in time, the land where your house now stands was just as pristine and beautiful as any part of Alaska. And the same is true for pretty much every other land changed by man.
But... we still have a slippery slope, after ANWR where next? Once we move past that your argument can still be used to move to more and more natural areas. I'm generally in favor of keeping as much "wasteland" out there as we can, we need it.
We really haven't even explored alternatives to ANWR, some ass-hat might make money off of it, so it is a BIG priority, no matter what. We really could look into alternative sources of energy, or even more offshore rigs (yes, the environmentalists also scream about that, but it is generally safer than an ecologically fragile environment, like permafrost/tundra). As I stated I worry about the slippery-slop elements of this, the NWR bit of ANWR is "National Wildlife Refuge", which is a federally protected bit of land, opening this up, would set a precedent of opening up more protected ecosystems. Why bother granting something protected status, if your just going to sell it to corporations.
Yes, the actual area is a small area of the huge refuge, BUT... Permafrost/tundra is very fragile, and we forget the infrastructure that would have to be built for exploration (not to mention exploitation of possible resources). We'd need camps, roads, pipelines, heavy machinery, etc... This would have a greater effect than merely utilizing the terrain for oil, its much more complicated than that.
We need to have set asides areas for the rest of the world (not counting us), and once set aside, they should stay that way.
So if it exists, and we are not aware of it, it has no value? I'm not sure I'm getting your point?
I understand the parents point, many people think much of my state is a barren, ugly, wasteland (Arizona), and I've often heard people here say that it would be okay to pave over the whole place for solar panels. I personally find the Sonaran Desert to be among the most beautiful places in the world (Alaska, from what I've seen is a close second.), and would vehemently fight anyone who wants to deface it for pure greed.
The environment has a value unto itself, not relative to our current value system. Degradation remains over a long term, and we are not certain of its future value to future generations. Also I believe that the land has value unto itself, not relative to our own. It has intrinsic value, is what I'm working towards.
As is thinking we should drill in ANWR. So your point is?
Basically you supply a nice slippery slope type argument here. If its okay to sacrifice this place, why isn't it wrong to do it in other places, until there are none left?
Doing some quicky cost analysis, guides my point of view towards the idea that the benefits (a couple cents cheaper gas in a decade or so) out weight the cost (more exploited land).
But then again I'm okay with the current "shortage" of oil, since we might slowly ween ourselves back from the gross, and inexcusable, excess lead to by the false sense of infinite resources/entitlement. Its a dose of reality, something we need in America.
I use the quotes around the term "shortage", since I'm lead to wonder if it really is as bad as our politicians and oilmen tell us. How much profit has Exxon-Mobil gotten since this "crisis" began? Generally companies don't break ALL records for profit during a crisis, and when they do, something is fishy.
I'll go even further to say that it is very wrong to live a promiscuous lifestyle (for which there are many reasons).
Out of curiosity, why do you think this? I can say that it isn't to my taste, but I can attach an absolute qualifier like "wrong" to it. I'm not trying to get into a flame war, I genuinely want to see your reasoning.
But to impose your morals on someone else and restrict freedom is probably the greatest crime... Society then exists to keep morals themselves in check. Don't like what one society believes, then move.
But didn't you just decentralize the same problem? Why is the tyranny of the masses enough to restrict my freedoms? Most morals, from what I've noticed, are completely arbitrary, especially the ones of a sexual nature. In many places homosexuality (for example) is consider immoral, but there is not objective reason for this to be true, just historical cultural "baggage".
I understand that certain roots of societies beliefs are individually important, but as you stated imposing these beliefs on other who don't have the same standards is one of the more grievous actions one can take.
Which is why I support a law state "people against gay marriages shall not receive gay marriages, unless they really want to"
I've been going through some pretty heavy misanthropic momements of late, which got me pondering this line of questioning. And the only answer I've been able to find is "No."
Humans have never been, and never can be solitary. Even if you find a bit of land that no-one will miss, and governments won't notice your presence and charge you for it, just being self-sustaining is HARD work, so hard that you'll be too busy to pick up on the benefits that you think you'd get from this type of existence. We are communal animals, we evolved this way, and can't really escape it.
The closest we can get is the idea of a "commune", but you'll find human flaws rearing their ugly head in this situation too. Its inevitable.
The cliche "no man is an island" is true, as is its more modern variant "no man is allowed to be an island". As a rather solitary individual, I've noticed that people can't STAND the idea of someone not needing people as much as they do. You must be ill to not want to spend all your time talking about nothing, and doing essentially nothing, just to cling to meager human contact.
The only solution I can see is true self-sufficiency. Not in the material sense, but in the internal sense, where you realize that you yourself is the center of your life's meaning. The Buddhists would call it detachment. If the "rat race" doesn't fulfill the internal needs you see as importance, change it, quit your job (find another one, or start a business doing what you love), sell your stuff (be like the guy in the story), and if your truly self-contained, you'll find a way to make do. Even if you take a hit in income, it doesn't matter as long as you have yourself.
It sounds like new age bullshit, I know. But what we have going for our society right now is obviously not working either, so I figure it at least is something.
you have your Extremely Good Friends, and Acquaintences
Actually we still have this distinction in English, as you just used the proper terms.:)
When I was growing up my parents were very careful to differentiate between these two classes of people in my life, so it still was very much part of the living English language in the 70s and 80s. As I got older, I added "good friend" to the mix, which are the people you know will still be there when the metaphorical shit hits the metaphorical fan, or of the "help you bury bodies" type.
My grandfather used to say "if, when you die, you can count all your real friends on more than one hand, you are blessed". If it came down to it, of all the people who I call friends (not acquaintances), only 3 or 4 I would consider true friends, people who are an integral part of my life, and I theirs. Not even my long-term girlfriend really falls into this category yet.
I don't know why this distinction is dying of late. I'm guessing increased communications (via cellphones and social networking) is partly at fault. We continually decide to trade quantity for quality in our social lives lately, it seems to me.
Its just the point where the "stuff" matters more, or you confuse the value of your stuff with your worth as a human being, that gets annoying. Don't get me wrong, I like my stuff as much as a next guy, but its monetary value has nothing to do with me or my self-worth.
I've noticed a lot of people tend to focus on acquiring more expensive stuff as an attempt to solve a personal deficiency. As if all this stuff will give their lives meaning. Or people identifying with their brand names/marketing demographics too much. I once knew a girl with a Nike "swoosh" tattoo, it was the best example of crass materialism I've ever seen.
Sure, some items carry some meaning, I've got a (overly stuffed) memento box and a photo album just like most other people, but when people state something like "I couldn't live without my cell-phone/laptop/HDTV", I feel some degree of pity for them.
I sometimes wonder what we are actually adding to our lives with so much stuff. Sometimes I think that we are actually just reducing the amount of actual meaningful existence we have by worrying so much about stupid stuff. Does having 3 computers, 4 television, 2 ipods, etc... really add much to my life? Or just more complications?
Sometimes I think we are missing out by removing religion as the center of meaning from our lives, and I'm saying this as a firm atheist. It seems we are lost, and materialism is just a weak attempt to center ourselves.
It isn't something that wobbles around in 100 generations, or something that has mattered much for the last 1000 years.
Actually it DOES matter. Why do you think we started fortifying milk with vitamin D? The mostly black inner cities were plagued with rickets from insufficient natural vitamin D, thanks to their increased amount of melanin as compared to northern Europeans, which lead to a lesser ability to use calcium, resulting in rickets.
I was just going to mention Phoenix (and the southwest in general).
I would guess that I get someone up north's daily sun intake buy just going about my daily business, without ever actively seeking it out (you'd have to be insane...) I started getting a rather decent tan within days of the temp hitting 100, and it generally sticks around until midwinter, with no effort on my behalf. And I'm probably as big a troglodyte as the typical geek here.
Perhaps ironically, most of the people I know living here in Phoenix have much healthier, younger looking skin than people living in Michigan, where I'm originally from.
This depends. a lot of the more blue collar folk I know have skin like leather after a decade of working here. As do most of the fashion conscious women here (which the bleached blonde hair, and extreme tan), which is really funny when you get around ASU.
But then again my father has been living here for 30 years, and has about 5 pre-cancerous growths removed a year, and has have a couple burgeoning melanomas getting started of late.
I don't disagree with you, I was just pointing out that there are more ethical ways of dealing with them. Most of them, from what I've noticed, aren't unexpected environmental factors, but quirks in your experiments.
In my case, if I remember right, it was caused by a participant whose first language was not English, and so the directions for the experiment didn't quite click. Even in the best thought out experiment there can be small unforeseeable errors. Granted this was behavioral research, and I rather doubt that the linguistic qualities of compounds come to play in chemistry, but there still are thing that can happen.
If your dealing with a very long term (and expensive) experiment, though, I can see where the temptation to ignore aberrant data would come in.
I don't think its communist, I think its badly worded. More like
"don't let ambition or greed get in the way of the quality of your work, or your honesty"
Nothing wrong with being greedy AND ethical, as long as ethics is never sacrificed for greed and ambition. I think it is more a misguided symbolic gesture to remind people to be ethical, a trait we ARE more commonly sacrificing for ambition and greed lately.
Its more of a social trust type thing. I can be sure of my intentions to be honest, but you can't be of mine. After this reputation takes hold, and we judge on past behavior, and its "fit" to previous oaths.
Though your right, it is rather absurd. If I WAS going to lie, why wouldn't I be able to lie on the oath too?
When I was taking a behavioral research course I ran into 2 points which I considered outliers (about 4 SD outside the average), I spend a long time pondering what to do with them. I finally threw them out in terms of the main research, but was very careful to included them into the study, making it very clear what they were, my reasoning, and their quantity (32-5ms for example).
Later I found out that I'd be perfectly fine tossing them, since they were so aberrant, and totally tossed the study (the stats wouldn't be representative), and the previous research.
So sometimes tossing outliers is fine, it just require A LOT of caution, and a healthy degree of disclosure.
Er... Child labor, slave labor, wage caps based on non-performance metrics (race, sex, gender, etc...)... All of these are natural in pure capitalism, since there are no constraints, and it rewards people for being unethical. Being a sociopath is a BENEFIT to good capitalists, anything where this is true, doesn't sound ideal to me. Capitalism is based on exploitation, and put the individuals good above all others. This, to me, is rather towards the immoral side.
Capitalism is also prone to concentrate wealth on one end, while keeping the other end at the lowest profitable level. Which, also, is suboptimal.
Pure socialism (or as you called it "communism")is just as distasteful, of course. There is a nice mix somewhere in the middle that ensures the greatest good for the greatest number.
I think all strata of society has equal worth as beings, and that corporations should be forced to pay their equal share (since this is antithema to the model of capitalism, I say force), and they should be forced to maintain the ethical rigor of the community.
Economy is a tool that should be chained to the greater good, and not an ends in itself.
No. But just because so-and-so intelligent Greek said it, and not such-and-such other intelligent Greek said it doesn't make it objectively valid anyways. I'm not getting into the abortion debate, but the Hippocratic oath is probably the weakest argument for or against abortion.
Unless your proposing a God, there is a difference here.
The laws of physics are deterministic, while the general streams of human thought are not. Can you tell me with any certainty what your parents intentions were when you were born, or what the hell you were thinking in highschool? Probably not, we're fallible, even when it comes to the past versions of ourselves.
Now stretch this back 200 years, through many very significant cultural changes, and tell me you really know what was going on in their very individual head, while your missing 90% of the context to make it meaningful.
I can say, with pretty damn good certainty that 1+1=2 200 years ago, but that is a different bag of tricks, and not applicable to human trends.
You may be the first person ever to accuse me of being unthinking. Actually I was just being lazy and a bit of a troll.
I wasn't calling YOU, per se, unthinking.:)
First off business, or more accurately economics, is everything when it comes to politics. Without money the government doesn't function, corporations are angry and the citizens are angry.
If you'll pardon me, I still have some interesting evolving views on this. I am slowly coming to think (or at least playing with the idea) that both classical conservatism and classical liberalism have the same goals. Conservatism goes for it from the top down (economics to people), while liberalism tries for top up (families-communities to economics). what this goal is... I can't quite say yet.
In this mutual anger, though, I am always prone to side with the citizens over the corporations, they haven't been to good to us lately (moving everything to the third world is a large part of our modern problems).
I would agree with needing leadership though... But... I don't see it happening, we're fundamentally split as a country, and we're falling deeper into the "us vs. them" idiocy of partisan politics. Look at this topic (even the microcosm of this exchange) and we can see a bit of the extent.
Modern politics is a bunch of morons yelling "liberals are evil!", and "conservatives are evil!"... This is part of the problem. Well that and apathy and ignorance hidden by desperate consumerism and distractions.
Are you SURE you know what the founding fathers wanted? I sure as hell don't, since it was 200+ years ago, and I'm not psychic. I do know, though, that they never read Ayn Rand, which seems to be the basis of most libertarian thoughts. We interpret history (and thus historical intentions) through the window of the present, and our intentions. Thus claiming you know their true intentions seems impossible, unless you can strip away all of the onus of the intervening history and your own psychology.
I know our founding fathers, though, read Locke and Mills, both of whom would be somewhat at odds with modern libertarian ideals, since they supported a more communal version of "rights" than most libertarians do today, as opposed to the base individualism that haunts the modern libertarian ideal. I doubt that many people from before the modern age would ever actually identify unmitigated individual greed as the basis of a political or social system.
That said, libertarians don't personally scare me, even if I am at odds with their ideals (mostly on the economic front), libertarians getting their way scares me. As does any narrow political ideology. Our system works best with a high degree of contention, and argument.
Personally I find the economic ideals of most libertarians to be naive, and based on personal greed rather than any actually rational basis. A truly free market would be a very bad thing for most of us. I do buy some of the social, and legal, ideals of the libertarian ideal though. But... my idea that government should exist only to maximize the good of the people under it is antithetical to much of the libertarian ideal, which seems to say "government should exist only to maximize my good".
Being that this veers dangerously off topic, let me add, this DoJ thing rather scares me, even if I understand that it isn't a "spook" thing. If the DoJ wanted to peek at the product AFTER it was developed (publicly and transparently), and only limited in the scope of the antitrust issue, I would be slightly less paranoid about this.
everything, all sites, including google, fade and die
I don't know if we can actually know this. The "web" is only 18 years old, which doesn't really grant us enough data to say. I think it might settle into the "meatspace" situation and have some big companies that never really go way, and tons of fly-by-night mom and pops. Google is probably here for quite a bit of time, though.
Sounds oddly like/., except without the Google ads. Seriously, we can "friend" and "foe" each other, we can write journals, we're rude, unhip, quite outdated. Though we might miss the technologically outdated bit in topic, but/. is hitting web 2.0 when 2.0 is now something like 2.1337, so we might count on that regard./. is the Mybookfacespace of the FUTURE!
Either that or we can all get Angelfire/Geocities pages again.
I haven't used Facebook since it was a college only site, though I recently opened an ignored profile just to see what the fuss was about; so I can't really speak for it. But I've have a MySpace account for a couple year, and noticed that the spam is actually getting less common as time goes on. They are, at least, handling that problem rather well.
That said, I do like Facebook's cleanliness a bit more, it at least solves the ugly profile problem. Though its "apps" mare much more spammy than MySpaces.
To clear my good name, I don't like either of them, but am forced to use MySpace to keep up with some old college freinds.
We the people with little money ALSO don't give a rats ass about you, we the people with a little money. Perhaps you should realize that most Americans are two pay checks away from being homeless and uninsured. As our economy tanks further and further, you are closer and closer to being on of the folks with no money.
I'm sick of the social Darwinism fallacy. A lot of poor people aren't poor because they chose to be, or because they want to be, or because they made bad choices. A lot of people are just STUCK there, and some of them for no reason besides bad luck. Some of them can get out of it, some of them can't, but most of them are there because society failed them. Don't use this version of the internal attribution error to justify greed, be honest about it at least.
But then again I put individuals above the corporations that hire them. Corporations are a construct, as is economy, on the other hand people (and their life, liberty and happiness) are REAL things. I don't read the Declaration of Independence as an individual manifest, but as a collective statement, we ALL have those rights, and we asserted these rights AS A NATION. They are not an excuse for individual greed and callousness, but follow the tradition of John Locke, and J.S. Mill. Meaning we have these rights, UNTIL they hurt someone else.
I'm getting sick of the term "rights" though. Where did these damn things come from? Rights are a subjective term. Also, your right to greed is suplanted by the more basic rights of others, the right to survival (health, food, water), why aren't these rights? Money and property is a right (somehow), but life isn't? Explain this, please?
Slashdot Mirror
Recommend "Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West" instead. That book was DAMN creepy, though beautifully written. No Country For Old Men was also good, as was "The Crossing", which also was haunting, but dark.
Not science books though. I like the "Einstein File", "The Mismeasure of Man" (can't go wrong with Gould), and the book on eugenics by the guy who wrote "IBM and the Holocaust". Good cautionary, or eye opening, tales of when science gets mixed with politics, for good or ill (ill for mankind, or Einstein's reputation)
As for more "pure" science, "G.E.B." is up there, I recommend it to anyone who can sit through it without bleeding through their ears. Sagan's Demon Haunted World, and Dragon's of Eden are also winners (anything by Sagan, like Gould, is gonna be good). "The World Without Us" was also brilliant, even if contentious.
I agree on the compromise bit, but it should be a slowly shifting compromise to wean us off of fossil fuels, and not a long-term investment to perpetuate this fiasco. No matter how you split it (ecologically, economically, geopolitically, or socially) our increasing dependence on oil (and fossil fuels in general) is a bad habit we should be working on removing. Increases in yield is/should be a stop-gap measure at best for moving towards a network of better sources of energy.
Therefore, a balance between conservation and practical use must be found. At one point in time, the land where your house now stands was just as pristine and beautiful as any part of Alaska. And the same is true for pretty much every other land changed by man.
But... we still have a slippery slope, after ANWR where next? Once we move past that your argument can still be used to move to more and more natural areas. I'm generally in favor of keeping as much "wasteland" out there as we can, we need it.
We really haven't even explored alternatives to ANWR, some ass-hat might make money off of it, so it is a BIG priority, no matter what. We really could look into alternative sources of energy, or even more offshore rigs (yes, the environmentalists also scream about that, but it is generally safer than an ecologically fragile environment, like permafrost/tundra). As I stated I worry about the slippery-slop elements of this, the NWR bit of ANWR is "National Wildlife Refuge", which is a federally protected bit of land, opening this up, would set a precedent of opening up more protected ecosystems. Why bother granting something protected status, if your just going to sell it to corporations.
Yes, the actual area is a small area of the huge refuge, BUT... Permafrost/tundra is very fragile, and we forget the infrastructure that would have to be built for exploration (not to mention exploitation of possible resources). We'd need camps, roads, pipelines, heavy machinery, etc... This would have a greater effect than merely utilizing the terrain for oil, its much more complicated than that.
We need to have set asides areas for the rest of the world (not counting us), and once set aside, they should stay that way.
So if it exists, and we are not aware of it, it has no value? I'm not sure I'm getting your point?
I understand the parents point, many people think much of my state is a barren, ugly, wasteland (Arizona), and I've often heard people here say that it would be okay to pave over the whole place for solar panels. I personally find the Sonaran Desert to be among the most beautiful places in the world (Alaska, from what I've seen is a close second.), and would vehemently fight anyone who wants to deface it for pure greed.
The environment has a value unto itself, not relative to our current value system. Degradation remains over a long term, and we are not certain of its future value to future generations. Also I believe that the land has value unto itself, not relative to our own. It has intrinsic value, is what I'm working towards.
Oh yes, I forgot it's a point of view.
As is thinking we should drill in ANWR. So your point is?
Basically you supply a nice slippery slope type argument here. If its okay to sacrifice this place, why isn't it wrong to do it in other places, until there are none left?
Doing some quicky cost analysis, guides my point of view towards the idea that the benefits (a couple cents cheaper gas in a decade or so) out weight the cost (more exploited land).
But then again I'm okay with the current "shortage" of oil, since we might slowly ween ourselves back from the gross, and inexcusable, excess lead to by the false sense of infinite resources/entitlement. Its a dose of reality, something we need in America.
I use the quotes around the term "shortage", since I'm lead to wonder if it really is as bad as our politicians and oilmen tell us. How much profit has Exxon-Mobil gotten since this "crisis" began? Generally companies don't break ALL records for profit during a crisis, and when they do, something is fishy.
be useful
Huh? To whom?
I'll go even further to say that it is very wrong to live a promiscuous lifestyle (for which there are many reasons).
Out of curiosity, why do you think this? I can say that it isn't to my taste, but I can attach an absolute qualifier like "wrong" to it. I'm not trying to get into a flame war, I genuinely want to see your reasoning.
But to impose your morals on someone else and restrict freedom is probably the greatest crime... Society then exists to keep morals themselves in check. Don't like what one society believes, then move.
But didn't you just decentralize the same problem? Why is the tyranny of the masses enough to restrict my freedoms? Most morals, from what I've noticed, are completely arbitrary, especially the ones of a sexual nature. In many places homosexuality (for example) is consider immoral, but there is not objective reason for this to be true, just historical cultural "baggage".
I understand that certain roots of societies beliefs are individually important, but as you stated imposing these beliefs on other who don't have the same standards is one of the more grievous actions one can take.
Which is why I support a law state "people against gay marriages shall not receive gay marriages, unless they really want to"
I've been going through some pretty heavy misanthropic momements of late, which got me pondering this line of questioning. And the only answer I've been able to find is "No."
Humans have never been, and never can be solitary. Even if you find a bit of land that no-one will miss, and governments won't notice your presence and charge you for it, just being self-sustaining is HARD work, so hard that you'll be too busy to pick up on the benefits that you think you'd get from this type of existence. We are communal animals, we evolved this way, and can't really escape it.
The closest we can get is the idea of a "commune", but you'll find human flaws rearing their ugly head in this situation too. Its inevitable.
The cliche "no man is an island" is true, as is its more modern variant "no man is allowed to be an island". As a rather solitary individual, I've noticed that people can't STAND the idea of someone not needing people as much as they do. You must be ill to not want to spend all your time talking about nothing, and doing essentially nothing, just to cling to meager human contact.
The only solution I can see is true self-sufficiency. Not in the material sense, but in the internal sense, where you realize that you yourself is the center of your life's meaning. The Buddhists would call it detachment. If the "rat race" doesn't fulfill the internal needs you see as importance, change it, quit your job (find another one, or start a business doing what you love), sell your stuff (be like the guy in the story), and if your truly self-contained, you'll find a way to make do. Even if you take a hit in income, it doesn't matter as long as you have yourself.
It sounds like new age bullshit, I know. But what we have going for our society right now is obviously not working either, so I figure it at least is something.
you have your Extremely Good Friends, and Acquaintences
Actually we still have this distinction in English, as you just used the proper terms. :)
When I was growing up my parents were very careful to differentiate between these two classes of people in my life, so it still was very much part of the living English language in the 70s and 80s. As I got older, I added "good friend" to the mix, which are the people you know will still be there when the metaphorical shit hits the metaphorical fan, or of the "help you bury bodies" type.
My grandfather used to say "if, when you die, you can count all your real friends on more than one hand, you are blessed". If it came down to it, of all the people who I call friends (not acquaintances), only 3 or 4 I would consider true friends, people who are an integral part of my life, and I theirs. Not even my long-term girlfriend really falls into this category yet.
I don't know why this distinction is dying of late. I'm guessing increased communications (via cellphones and social networking) is partly at fault. We continually decide to trade quantity for quality in our social lives lately, it seems to me.
Its just the point where the "stuff" matters more, or you confuse the value of your stuff with your worth as a human being, that gets annoying. Don't get me wrong, I like my stuff as much as a next guy, but its monetary value has nothing to do with me or my self-worth.
I've noticed a lot of people tend to focus on acquiring more expensive stuff as an attempt to solve a personal deficiency. As if all this stuff will give their lives meaning. Or people identifying with their brand names/marketing demographics too much. I once knew a girl with a Nike "swoosh" tattoo, it was the best example of crass materialism I've ever seen.
Sure, some items carry some meaning, I've got a (overly stuffed) memento box and a photo album just like most other people, but when people state something like "I couldn't live without my cell-phone/laptop/HDTV", I feel some degree of pity for them.
I sometimes wonder what we are actually adding to our lives with so much stuff. Sometimes I think that we are actually just reducing the amount of actual meaningful existence we have by worrying so much about stupid stuff. Does having 3 computers, 4 television, 2 ipods, etc... really add much to my life? Or just more complications?
Sometimes I think we are missing out by removing religion as the center of meaning from our lives, and I'm saying this as a firm atheist. It seems we are lost, and materialism is just a weak attempt to center ourselves.
It isn't something that wobbles around in 100 generations, or something that has mattered much for the last 1000 years.
Actually it DOES matter. Why do you think we started fortifying milk with vitamin D? The mostly black inner cities were plagued with rickets from insufficient natural vitamin D, thanks to their increased amount of melanin as compared to northern Europeans, which lead to a lesser ability to use calcium, resulting in rickets.
I was just going to mention Phoenix (and the southwest in general).
I would guess that I get someone up north's daily sun intake buy just going about my daily business, without ever actively seeking it out (you'd have to be insane...) I started getting a rather decent tan within days of the temp hitting 100, and it generally sticks around until midwinter, with no effort on my behalf. And I'm probably as big a troglodyte as the typical geek here.
Perhaps ironically, most of the people I know living here in Phoenix have much healthier, younger looking skin than people living in Michigan, where I'm originally from.
This depends. a lot of the more blue collar folk I know have skin like leather after a decade of working here. As do most of the fashion conscious women here (which the bleached blonde hair, and extreme tan), which is really funny when you get around ASU.
But then again my father has been living here for 30 years, and has about 5 pre-cancerous growths removed a year, and has have a couple burgeoning melanomas getting started of late.
I don't disagree with you, I was just pointing out that there are more ethical ways of dealing with them. Most of them, from what I've noticed, aren't unexpected environmental factors, but quirks in your experiments.
In my case, if I remember right, it was caused by a participant whose first language was not English, and so the directions for the experiment didn't quite click. Even in the best thought out experiment there can be small unforeseeable errors. Granted this was behavioral research, and I rather doubt that the linguistic qualities of compounds come to play in chemistry, but there still are thing that can happen.
If your dealing with a very long term (and expensive) experiment, though, I can see where the temptation to ignore aberrant data would come in.
I don't think its communist, I think its badly worded. More like
"don't let ambition or greed get in the way of the quality of your work, or your honesty"
Nothing wrong with being greedy AND ethical, as long as ethics is never sacrificed for greed and ambition. I think it is more a misguided symbolic gesture to remind people to be ethical, a trait we ARE more commonly sacrificing for ambition and greed lately.
Its more of a social trust type thing. I can be sure of my intentions to be honest, but you can't be of mine. After this reputation takes hold, and we judge on past behavior, and its "fit" to previous oaths.
Though your right, it is rather absurd. If I WAS going to lie, why wouldn't I be able to lie on the oath too?
When I was taking a behavioral research course I ran into 2 points which I considered outliers (about 4 SD outside the average), I spend a long time pondering what to do with them. I finally threw them out in terms of the main research, but was very careful to included them into the study, making it very clear what they were, my reasoning, and their quantity (32-5ms for example).
Later I found out that I'd be perfectly fine tossing them, since they were so aberrant, and totally tossed the study (the stats wouldn't be representative), and the previous research.
So sometimes tossing outliers is fine, it just require A LOT of caution, and a healthy degree of disclosure.
Er... Child labor, slave labor, wage caps based on non-performance metrics (race, sex, gender, etc...)... All of these are natural in pure capitalism, since there are no constraints, and it rewards people for being unethical. Being a sociopath is a BENEFIT to good capitalists, anything where this is true, doesn't sound ideal to me. Capitalism is based on exploitation, and put the individuals good above all others. This, to me, is rather towards the immoral side.
Capitalism is also prone to concentrate wealth on one end, while keeping the other end at the lowest profitable level. Which, also, is suboptimal.
Pure socialism (or as you called it "communism")is just as distasteful, of course. There is a nice mix somewhere in the middle that ensures the greatest good for the greatest number.
I think all strata of society has equal worth as beings, and that corporations should be forced to pay their equal share (since this is antithema to the model of capitalism, I say force), and they should be forced to maintain the ethical rigor of the community.
Economy is a tool that should be chained to the greater good, and not an ends in itself.
No. But just because so-and-so intelligent Greek said it, and not such-and-such other intelligent Greek said it doesn't make it objectively valid anyways. I'm not getting into the abortion debate, but the Hippocratic oath is probably the weakest argument for or against abortion.
Unless your proposing a God, there is a difference here.
The laws of physics are deterministic, while the general streams of human thought are not. Can you tell me with any certainty what your parents intentions were when you were born, or what the hell you were thinking in highschool? Probably not, we're fallible, even when it comes to the past versions of ourselves.
Now stretch this back 200 years, through many very significant cultural changes, and tell me you really know what was going on in their very individual head, while your missing 90% of the context to make it meaningful.
I can say, with pretty damn good certainty that 1+1=2 200 years ago, but that is a different bag of tricks, and not applicable to human trends.
Touche!
You may be the first person ever to accuse me of being unthinking. Actually I was just being lazy and a bit of a troll.
I wasn't calling YOU, per se, unthinking. :)
First off business, or more accurately economics, is everything when it comes to politics. Without money the government doesn't function, corporations are angry and the citizens are angry.
If you'll pardon me, I still have some interesting evolving views on this. I am slowly coming to think (or at least playing with the idea) that both classical conservatism and classical liberalism have the same goals. Conservatism goes for it from the top down (economics to people), while liberalism tries for top up (families-communities to economics). what this goal is... I can't quite say yet.
In this mutual anger, though, I am always prone to side with the citizens over the corporations, they haven't been to good to us lately (moving everything to the third world is a large part of our modern problems).
I would agree with needing leadership though... But... I don't see it happening, we're fundamentally split as a country, and we're falling deeper into the "us vs. them" idiocy of partisan politics. Look at this topic (even the microcosm of this exchange) and we can see a bit of the extent.
Modern politics is a bunch of morons yelling "liberals are evil!", and "conservatives are evil!"... This is part of the problem. Well that and apathy and ignorance hidden by desperate consumerism and distractions.
Are you SURE you know what the founding fathers wanted? I sure as hell don't, since it was 200+ years ago, and I'm not psychic. I do know, though, that they never read Ayn Rand, which seems to be the basis of most libertarian thoughts. We interpret history (and thus historical intentions) through the window of the present, and our intentions. Thus claiming you know their true intentions seems impossible, unless you can strip away all of the onus of the intervening history and your own psychology.
I know our founding fathers, though, read Locke and Mills, both of whom would be somewhat at odds with modern libertarian ideals, since they supported a more communal version of "rights" than most libertarians do today, as opposed to the base individualism that haunts the modern libertarian ideal. I doubt that many people from before the modern age would ever actually identify unmitigated individual greed as the basis of a political or social system.
That said, libertarians don't personally scare me, even if I am at odds with their ideals (mostly on the economic front), libertarians getting their way scares me. As does any narrow political ideology. Our system works best with a high degree of contention, and argument.
Personally I find the economic ideals of most libertarians to be naive, and based on personal greed rather than any actually rational basis. A truly free market would be a very bad thing for most of us. I do buy some of the social, and legal, ideals of the libertarian ideal though. But... my idea that government should exist only to maximize the good of the people under it is antithetical to much of the libertarian ideal, which seems to say "government should exist only to maximize my good".
Being that this veers dangerously off topic, let me add, this DoJ thing rather scares me, even if I understand that it isn't a "spook" thing. If the DoJ wanted to peek at the product AFTER it was developed (publicly and transparently), and only limited in the scope of the antitrust issue, I would be slightly less paranoid about this.
everything, all sites, including google, fade and die
I don't know if we can actually know this. The "web" is only 18 years old, which doesn't really grant us enough data to say. I think it might settle into the "meatspace" situation and have some big companies that never really go way, and tons of fly-by-night mom and pops. Google is probably here for quite a bit of time, though.
Sounds oddly like /., except without the Google ads. Seriously, we can "friend" and "foe" each other, we can write journals, we're rude, unhip, quite outdated. Though we might miss the technologically outdated bit in topic, but /. is hitting web 2.0 when 2.0 is now something like 2.1337, so we might count on that regard. /. is the Mybookfacespace of the FUTURE!
Either that or we can all get Angelfire/Geocities pages again.
I haven't used Facebook since it was a college only site, though I recently opened an ignored profile just to see what the fuss was about; so I can't really speak for it. But I've have a MySpace account for a couple year, and noticed that the spam is actually getting less common as time goes on. They are, at least, handling that problem rather well.
That said, I do like Facebook's cleanliness a bit more, it at least solves the ugly profile problem. Though its "apps" mare much more spammy than MySpaces.
To clear my good name, I don't like either of them, but am forced to use MySpace to keep up with some old college freinds.
We the people with little money ALSO don't give a rats ass about you, we the people with a little money. Perhaps you should realize that most Americans are two pay checks away from being homeless and uninsured. As our economy tanks further and further, you are closer and closer to being on of the folks with no money.
I'm sick of the social Darwinism fallacy. A lot of poor people aren't poor because they chose to be, or because they want to be, or because they made bad choices. A lot of people are just STUCK there, and some of them for no reason besides bad luck. Some of them can get out of it, some of them can't, but most of them are there because society failed them. Don't use this version of the internal attribution error to justify greed, be honest about it at least.
But then again I put individuals above the corporations that hire them. Corporations are a construct, as is economy, on the other hand people (and their life, liberty and happiness) are REAL things. I don't read the Declaration of Independence as an individual manifest, but as a collective statement, we ALL have those rights, and we asserted these rights AS A NATION. They are not an excuse for individual greed and callousness, but follow the tradition of John Locke, and J.S. Mill. Meaning we have these rights, UNTIL they hurt someone else.
I'm getting sick of the term "rights" though. Where did these damn things come from? Rights are a subjective term. Also, your right to greed is suplanted by the more basic rights of others, the right to survival (health, food, water), why aren't these rights? Money and property is a right (somehow), but life isn't? Explain this, please?