Unfortantely, because you are not an American you don't realize the totality of the situations as it stands. Let me first say this, and acknowlege my own part in it; 2000 I voted for the moron because I thought he was better than Gore. 2004 I didn't vote at all because I figured it was tweedle dee and tweedle dum [regardless, I'm in a state that always votes democratic but I must acknowledge my mistake before my critique]. Obviously, I was very very wrong and every day Bush manages to prove that to me again.
Believe it or not, in the whole scheme of things, Bush is not nearly as dangerous as the situation as a whole. The United States is currently on a very dangerous precipe where the evangelical right are attempting to sieze control of this country and turn it in to a religious state. Currently, in the US today, there are RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS operating in Washington DC with the INTENT of creating future politicians. It disgusts me. Things such as "intelligent design" are talked about as though they are scientific theories [I have no problem with intelligent design per se, but teach it in a bloody philosophy class, where it belongs not a fucking science class]. Rowe v. Wade could be overturned giveen what's going on with the Supreme Court [and I'm sick of pro-life, evangelical right people polarizing the issue for political ends, no one WANTS abortion to occur but it's a necessary evil]. The Patriot Act takes our constitutional rights and pisses on them as if they were meaningless; their are prisoners detained with no charges brought against them. What are we, China?
I'm not going to say that they don't get some nasty storms coming off the North Sea in the Netherlands because from what I have heard they can get some really nasty ones but you're comparing Apples and Oranges. The magnitude of what hit New Orleans is far far stronger than ANYTHING that will hit in the Netherlands. This is not to say that damage could have been mitigated but it's to say that Hurricanes present a much much larger threat and are much more difficult to deal with.
I for one will not use this as an opportunity to Windows bash nor will I pontificate about the wonder of linux/unix/mac, thus I accept the inevitable mod down/flame war I'm about to start. No computer OS is safe from being hacked, none what-so-ever. Nor is it *ALL* big bad microsoft's fault that there are so many exploits being exposed (there is a keyword and a key phrase here that I ask you not to ignore before you start flaming, the first is "all" the second is "being exposed").
I would bet my life on the fact that there ARE things that CAN be exploited on the OSX, but if I'm some malovelent type WHY in the world would I spend my time finding shit that affects such a small segment of the population? If I want to gain noteriety or cause havoc, I'm going to go after Windows...why? Because 90% of computers use the Windows operating system. There's a greater market for my virus if its in Windows; afterall most of these assholes use it to create zombie armies to do nefarious things. Not enough linux/unix/mac users combined to make it worthwhile...
It's known as the flynn effect. Which causes a shift of one standard deviation per generation; suppose it depends on exactly how long a generation is considered.
Actually, I'd argue there is an advantage to survival; having fair skin light eyes and light hair causes people to immediately treat you differently. I never noticed it until I lost weight but depending upon how you look people will treat you quite a bit differently, even as a male. I realize that weight is a contributing factor here but the closer you fall to the subconcious societal ideal, the more immediate respect you are given.
If you want some ancedotal evidence, look at Hollywood; generally considered to be the most attractive people. A large portion have light colored eyes...
This could be considered somewhat pedantic but we will not "lose as much as one point of IQ per generation" because 100 = average. Moreover, about every decade they have to redo the IQ tests because there tends to be a shift of a positive 10 points. If you take an IQ test from the 50's you will score higher than one today; now if you want to argue that scores on either types of intelligence tests will decrease [such as the one that I think is called the raven test although I can't seem to wiki it...I've heard it's more indicative of overall intelligence and it's not some "seven kinds of intelligence" mobojumbo, it just relies less on multiple choice and more on overall cognative ability...at least that's the impression I have been given but I can't find any goddamn material on it, sorry] that's fine, I can't substantiate for or against your claim.
Also, be very careful making claims regarding a correlation between rich-poor and stupid-smart. My father grew up poor but is probably one of the smartest people I've ever met, subsequently I didn't grow up under the same conditions. I had the priviledge of going to school with all those rich people and let me tell you it's just like any other slice of a population; some are smart some are stupid and most are average.
Too bad it had nothing to do with saving our kids and was just a platform for Hillary Clinton to promote a pro-family image for her white house bid in 2008. It's sad that our society is so easily manipulated.
Too bad this message had to start a flamewar regarding gun control...maybe you should have added the "Or maybe you shouldn't bring me every piece of trash that you find in the copy machine".
First, let me say that I am an American living in Los Angeles [according to the phone company, I'm in Inglewood]. I would argue that the reason that America is such a violent culture has to do with our accepted mythologies [I was also a philosophy major, we tend to look at the world in a really stupid way but I love it anyhow], but it's a double edged sword. The same reason that America is a superpower [for better and for worse] has to do with our accepted mythologies. For instance, the prevading mythical archetype for men growing up in the 40's & 50's was "the lone ranger" or any character John Wayne played. These lone gunmen types always went it alone, rode in to town at high noon to save it from evil men and then rode off in to the sunset [See G.W.Bush]. This became the prevaiding mythos that guided the developmental process of many many young men throughout the US during this time period [some of you, at this point, are probably crying wolf, "where is he getting this shit from?"...well anthropology for one; anthroplogists seem to be finding that the type of culture formed is predicated on the type of mythical stories, I realize this raising the chicken/egg argument and I don't have an answer to that].
Fast forward to America 2005: the first question that must be answered is where is story telling and mythical creativity occuring? It is certainly no longer the realm of religion, as it was for the Greeks & the Romans. Monotheastic religions have usurped control by becoming dogmatic and refusing to be dynamic [this is a broad stroke, I realize that, but can you explain to me why then there is so much stupidity regarding religion going on in the US? Creationism for instance...you've got to be fucking kidding me right? Creationism? How fucking myopic can you get.] thus mythic creativity has spilled over in to things such as Comic Books, TV Shows and Movies.
Finally, we get the Christian Fundamentalists who think that human sexuality can be repressed and that we must protect our young from the evils of sexuality [even though there is this thing called the internet which most kids can navigate better than there parents...even here on slashdot I'm sure there are parents who think they can prevent their children from accessing porn on the internet, well you can't. You may stop it at your house but at little Jimmy's house, where his parents either A) don't care or B) don't know where the "any key" is on the keyboard]. This is where the wonderful folks from marketing step in, sex sells but we can't sell sex so we have to find the next best thing which sells which happens to be violence. Thus violence becomes focal point of American Culture; it's our own creation.
Anyhow, just wanted to add my crazy perspective to this fun little flamewar:)
An article I read on this yesterday stated that this is indeed normal, happens about once every 4,000 years and it's about time for it to happen again; wish I had the link but I don't:-/ Anyhow, this is just normal geological stuff, atleast according to what I read yesterday.
I would argue that the American Comic industry is doing something fundamentally different than the Japanese and European comic book companies. Let me first say that my exposure to manga and such is very limited and is stuff like "Ghost in the Shell", so I'm going to extrapolate from that; please tell me if I'm painting with too broad a brush. "Ghost in the Shell" is an adult-level story with complex themes but there is nothing mythic about it. There are no porportions of godliness [don't confuse philosophical with mythic, two very different concepts; GitS deals with heavy philosophical concepts regarding existence but I saw nothing mythic occuring]. Marvel & DC are dealing more with mythology. Mythology has ALWAYS been heavily image laden; look at the greek/roman myths. Moreover the process is completely different; mythic creation tap in to a general meme that seems to run through human society.
The irony to the entire thing is that the monotheastic religions of today are a result of the same process as that of the comic book super heroes. What I find fascinating about comic book characters is they are one of the last bastions of mythic creativity occuring within modern culture. Mythic creativity has been a meme within human cultures for a very long time and unfortantely the mainstream monothesastic religions no longer allow for any mythic creativity thus it spilled over in to comic books.
If anyone is interested in an academic approach to this subject matter I suggest checking out some of Joseph Campbell's work. The Power of Myth is a great place to start; it does not deal specifically with comic books but it deals with the sociophenomona of myth creation. Great stuff!
To put things in perspective with regard to just how "round" the earth actually is; if you were to take a standard pool ball and blow it up to the same size as the earth it would have deeper valley's and higher peaks. The earth is pretty damn round/smooth:)
To add to your comment, California can only use sweet crude which only comes from the middle east. We [California] don't use the sour crude which comes down the Alaskan pipeline or off the coasts; the rest of the country is able to use this stuff. My understanding is that the sweet crude is less toxic; I guess we make up for it by using more of it in our god damn SUV's.
Pat Robertson, who is the numbskull who made that comment, is not a politician. He's a televangilist and at the risk of taking hyperbole too far, is akin to Osama Bin Laden. All he's doing is using his religious platform and his own ego to attempt to change the world; fucking evangelical christians.
I know that final statement is far too broad because there are many many many wonderful evangelical christians who legitamitely care about other people and want what's best for groups at large but there are a few really really bad apples.
With the reality of the melting ice caps and global warming, it actually is an issue for the Dutch. Though they don't get hurricanes, within the next fifty years it is my understanding that they could be in a bit of trouble.
Furthermore, if you think you can't "afford" that level of change, what do you think loss of what is probably going to be 50% of the currently inhabited area of the US is going to do to quality of life? Because that's what's going to happen if the trend continues.
I'm not arguing that global warming isn't happening and for the most part I agree with what you have to say but this is a very strong statement to make without some sort of link/evidence to validate it. Would you mind posting a source? I'm curious for my own sake and to be honest the magnitude of this claim sounds tin-foil hatish to me.
It's actually rather funny to watch; and it can happen to either gender. When your entire perception of self is tied up in to your physical appeal, things come crashing down about the 40th year mark when he/she realizes that they no longer have that power. Chaos insues; would make some awesome reality TV and I hate reality TV:)
Professional football is probably the best example of this; most people think Pro Football players are a bunch of cave men left over from the paleolethic era [if cave men didn't exist in that era, that's all fine and dandy but I'm making a slashpoint; I don't have to back up what I say with actual scientific evidence because I say so!] but reality is quite a bit different. In order to be a successful linebacker or quaterback in the NFL you need to have some grey matter uptop otherwise you're going to get beaten silly. There aren't many of us here who could synthesize every play that your opposing team had run for the past ten weeks; Peyton Manning does this. He knows opponents defenses so well that he calls out their blitzing and coverage schemes at the line of scrimmage. This is not rote learning, this requires sophisticated synthesization of oppoenents playbooks because defensive schemes are designed to mask blitz/coverage info.
Personally, I'd be so fucking afraid of being hit by the 6'6 275lb defensive end who runs a 40 in 4.4 seconds that I wouldn't even know how to get the center to snap the ball. Point being, don't think these guys are stupid because they play a violent sport; they may be lacking common sense but some of these guys could go toe-to-toe with the smartest people here.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't back away from the critism man; you're right, I was very wrong.
Unfortantely, because you are not an American you don't realize the totality of the situations as it stands. Let me first say this, and acknowlege my own part in it; 2000 I voted for the moron because I thought he was better than Gore. 2004 I didn't vote at all because I figured it was tweedle dee and tweedle dum [regardless, I'm in a state that always votes democratic but I must acknowledge my mistake before my critique]. Obviously, I was very very wrong and every day Bush manages to prove that to me again.
Believe it or not, in the whole scheme of things, Bush is not nearly as dangerous as the situation as a whole. The United States is currently on a very dangerous precipe where the evangelical right are attempting to sieze control of this country and turn it in to a religious state. Currently, in the US today, there are RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS operating in Washington DC with the INTENT of creating future politicians. It disgusts me. Things such as "intelligent design" are talked about as though they are scientific theories [I have no problem with intelligent design per se, but teach it in a bloody philosophy class, where it belongs not a fucking science class]. Rowe v. Wade could be overturned giveen what's going on with the Supreme Court [and I'm sick of pro-life, evangelical right people polarizing the issue for political ends, no one WANTS abortion to occur but it's a necessary evil]. The Patriot Act takes our constitutional rights and pisses on them as if they were meaningless; their are prisoners detained with no charges brought against them. What are we, China?
Fucking A.
I'm not going to say that they don't get some nasty storms coming off the North Sea in the Netherlands because from what I have heard they can get some really nasty ones but you're comparing Apples and Oranges. The magnitude of what hit New Orleans is far far stronger than ANYTHING that will hit in the Netherlands. This is not to say that damage could have been mitigated but it's to say that Hurricanes present a much much larger threat and are much more difficult to deal with.
I for one will not use this as an opportunity to Windows bash nor will I pontificate about the wonder of linux/unix/mac, thus I accept the inevitable mod down/flame war I'm about to start. No computer OS is safe from being hacked, none what-so-ever. Nor is it *ALL* big bad microsoft's fault that there are so many exploits being exposed (there is a keyword and a key phrase here that I ask you not to ignore before you start flaming, the first is "all" the second is "being exposed").
I would bet my life on the fact that there ARE things that CAN be exploited on the OSX, but if I'm some malovelent type WHY in the world would I spend my time finding shit that affects such a small segment of the population? If I want to gain noteriety or cause havoc, I'm going to go after Windows...why? Because 90% of computers use the Windows operating system. There's a greater market for my virus if its in Windows; afterall most of these assholes use it to create zombie armies to do nefarious things. Not enough linux/unix/mac users combined to make it worthwhile...
It's known as the flynn effect. Which causes a shift of one standard deviation per generation; suppose it depends on exactly how long a generation is considered.
Actually, I'd argue there is an advantage to survival; having fair skin light eyes and light hair causes people to immediately treat you differently. I never noticed it until I lost weight but depending upon how you look people will treat you quite a bit differently, even as a male. I realize that weight is a contributing factor here but the closer you fall to the subconcious societal ideal, the more immediate respect you are given.
If you want some ancedotal evidence, look at Hollywood; generally considered to be the most attractive people. A large portion have light colored eyes...
This could be considered somewhat pedantic but we will not "lose as much as one point of IQ per generation" because 100 = average. Moreover, about every decade they have to redo the IQ tests because there tends to be a shift of a positive 10 points. If you take an IQ test from the 50's you will score higher than one today; now if you want to argue that scores on either types of intelligence tests will decrease [such as the one that I think is called the raven test although I can't seem to wiki it...I've heard it's more indicative of overall intelligence and it's not some "seven kinds of intelligence" mobojumbo, it just relies less on multiple choice and more on overall cognative ability...at least that's the impression I have been given but I can't find any goddamn material on it, sorry] that's fine, I can't substantiate for or against your claim.
Also, be very careful making claims regarding a correlation between rich-poor and stupid-smart. My father grew up poor but is probably one of the smartest people I've ever met, subsequently I didn't grow up under the same conditions. I had the priviledge of going to school with all those rich people and let me tell you it's just like any other slice of a population; some are smart some are stupid and most are average.
We're talking about the modern era; last I checked the value of human life was quite a bit different even 150 years.
And I've probably taken more history classes than 90% of people on slashdot so don't even start.
Too bad it had nothing to do with saving our kids and was just a platform for Hillary Clinton to promote a pro-family image for her white house bid in 2008. It's sad that our society is so easily manipulated.
Too bad this message had to start a flamewar regarding gun control...maybe you should have added the "Or maybe you shouldn't bring me every piece of trash that you find in the copy machine".
First, let me say that I am an American living in Los Angeles [according to the phone company, I'm in Inglewood]. I would argue that the reason that America is such a violent culture has to do with our accepted mythologies [I was also a philosophy major, we tend to look at the world in a really stupid way but I love it anyhow], but it's a double edged sword. The same reason that America is a superpower [for better and for worse] has to do with our accepted mythologies. For instance, the prevading mythical archetype for men growing up in the 40's & 50's was "the lone ranger" or any character John Wayne played. These lone gunmen types always went it alone, rode in to town at high noon to save it from evil men and then rode off in to the sunset [See G.W.Bush]. This became the prevaiding mythos that guided the developmental process of many many young men throughout the US during this time period [some of you, at this point, are probably crying wolf, "where is he getting this shit from?"...well anthropology for one; anthroplogists seem to be finding that the type of culture formed is predicated on the type of mythical stories, I realize this raising the chicken/egg argument and I don't have an answer to that].
:)
Fast forward to America 2005: the first question that must be answered is where is story telling and mythical creativity occuring? It is certainly no longer the realm of religion, as it was for the Greeks & the Romans. Monotheastic religions have usurped control by becoming dogmatic and refusing to be dynamic [this is a broad stroke, I realize that, but can you explain to me why then there is so much stupidity regarding religion going on in the US? Creationism for instance...you've got to be fucking kidding me right? Creationism? How fucking myopic can you get.] thus mythic creativity has spilled over in to things such as Comic Books, TV Shows and Movies.
Finally, we get the Christian Fundamentalists who think that human sexuality can be repressed and that we must protect our young from the evils of sexuality [even though there is this thing called the internet which most kids can navigate better than there parents...even here on slashdot I'm sure there are parents who think they can prevent their children from accessing porn on the internet, well you can't. You may stop it at your house but at little Jimmy's house, where his parents either A) don't care or B) don't know where the "any key" is on the keyboard]. This is where the wonderful folks from marketing step in, sex sells but we can't sell sex so we have to find the next best thing which sells which happens to be violence. Thus violence becomes focal point of American Culture; it's our own creation.
Anyhow, just wanted to add my crazy perspective to this fun little flamewar
Especially if people start to get a little crazy with their ice-9 ... dihydrogen monoxide + ice-9 = lots and lots of unhappiness!
Same thing happened to me, accept I got bored at level 20 :p
Blizzard is still making money off me though, I should really cancel my acct....
An article I read on this yesterday stated that this is indeed normal, happens about once every 4,000 years and it's about time for it to happen again; wish I had the link but I don't :-/ Anyhow, this is just normal geological stuff, atleast according to what I read yesterday.
I would argue that the American Comic industry is doing something fundamentally different than the Japanese and European comic book companies. Let me first say that my exposure to manga and such is very limited and is stuff like "Ghost in the Shell", so I'm going to extrapolate from that; please tell me if I'm painting with too broad a brush. "Ghost in the Shell" is an adult-level story with complex themes but there is nothing mythic about it. There are no porportions of godliness [don't confuse philosophical with mythic, two very different concepts; GitS deals with heavy philosophical concepts regarding existence but I saw nothing mythic occuring]. Marvel & DC are dealing more with mythology. Mythology has ALWAYS been heavily image laden; look at the greek/roman myths. Moreover the process is completely different; mythic creation tap in to a general meme that seems to run through human society.
The irony to the entire thing is that the monotheastic religions of today are a result of the same process as that of the comic book super heroes. What I find fascinating about comic book characters is they are one of the last bastions of mythic creativity occuring within modern culture. Mythic creativity has been a meme within human cultures for a very long time and unfortantely the mainstream monothesastic religions no longer allow for any mythic creativity thus it spilled over in to comic books.
If anyone is interested in an academic approach to this subject matter I suggest checking out some of Joseph Campbell's work. The Power of Myth is a great place to start; it does not deal specifically with comic books but it deals with the sociophenomona of myth creation. Great stuff!
To put things in perspective with regard to just how "round" the earth actually is; if you were to take a standard pool ball and blow it up to the same size as the earth it would have deeper valley's and higher peaks. The earth is pretty damn round/smooth :)
Wow, that sounds really cool. Too bad I didn't understand a god damn thing you just said :-/
:)
Good luck with that though!
To add to your comment, California can only use sweet crude which only comes from the middle east. We [California] don't use the sour crude which comes down the Alaskan pipeline or off the coasts; the rest of the country is able to use this stuff. My understanding is that the sweet crude is less toxic; I guess we make up for it by using more of it in our god damn SUV's.
Pat Robertson, who is the numbskull who made that comment, is not a politician. He's a televangilist and at the risk of taking hyperbole too far, is akin to Osama Bin Laden. All he's doing is using his religious platform and his own ego to attempt to change the world; fucking evangelical christians.
I know that final statement is far too broad because there are many many many wonderful evangelical christians who legitamitely care about other people and want what's best for groups at large but there are a few really really bad apples.
With the reality of the melting ice caps and global warming, it actually is an issue for the Dutch. Though they don't get hurricanes, within the next fifty years it is my understanding that they could be in a bit of trouble.
Philosophy Major in IT.........
Furthermore, if you think you can't "afford" that level of change, what do you think loss of what is probably going to be 50% of the currently inhabited area of the US is going to do to quality of life? Because that's what's going to happen if the trend continues.
I'm not arguing that global warming isn't happening and for the most part I agree with what you have to say but this is a very strong statement to make without some sort of link/evidence to validate it. Would you mind posting a source? I'm curious for my own sake and to be honest the magnitude of this claim sounds tin-foil hatish to me.
It's actually rather funny to watch; and it can happen to either gender. When your entire perception of self is tied up in to your physical appeal, things come crashing down about the 40th year mark when he/she realizes that they no longer have that power. Chaos insues; would make some awesome reality TV and I hate reality TV :)
Professional football is probably the best example of this; most people think Pro Football players are a bunch of cave men left over from the paleolethic era [if cave men didn't exist in that era, that's all fine and dandy but I'm making a slashpoint; I don't have to back up what I say with actual scientific evidence because I say so!] but reality is quite a bit different. In order to be a successful linebacker or quaterback in the NFL you need to have some grey matter uptop otherwise you're going to get beaten silly. There aren't many of us here who could synthesize every play that your opposing team had run for the past ten weeks; Peyton Manning does this. He knows opponents defenses so well that he calls out their blitzing and coverage schemes at the line of scrimmage. This is not rote learning, this requires sophisticated synthesization of oppoenents playbooks because defensive schemes are designed to mask blitz/coverage info.
Personally, I'd be so fucking afraid of being hit by the 6'6 275lb defensive end who runs a 40 in 4.4 seconds that I wouldn't even know how to get the center to snap the ball. Point being, don't think these guys are stupid because they play a violent sport; they may be lacking common sense but some of these guys could go toe-to-toe with the smartest people here.