Bullshit. The US wants him badly. Very badly. Short of obvious assassination attempts on foreign soil, they are doing everything in their power to get him to Gitmo, but they are too stupid and incompetent. The whole world is laughing at them and smiling as their quarry slips from their grasp forever. And I am cheering as this hero gives the finger to the USDOJ and the rest of the corrupt, thuggish government as he exposes all of their illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional behavior. I'm hoping that this is one of the few times where the good guy actually wins. For once, perhaps a good deed will go at least somewhat unpunished. I wish him a happy life in Ecuador. It's a nicer place to live than the US anyway.
He's clearly not planning to stay in Russia. He doesn't even have a visa, which is not easy to get on short notice, but why would Russia consider him a traitor? If he were to give them information about NSA operations he would be a patriot from their perspective.
He can spend up to 3 months in Cuba on a tourist visa. Obviously the Cuban government isn't going to extradite him and Cubana won't be sending the US any flight lists. This point is perhaps the most important. Cuba is a place where Snowdon can break the paper trail. He can stay anywhere from 1 to 90 days there and then procede to his final destination.
The only risk to this strategy is that the Cuban government may want to ask him a few questions about the NSA before allowing him to leave. Assuming the Cuban government allows him to leave I would guess Ecuador. It's obviously willing to protect whistle blowers and Assange could have discussed the matter directly with officials at his embassy. According to this list Ecuador does have an extradition treaty with the US though, but maybe it is just for murders and other violent crime. I think Ecuador and Venezuela are both nice places to live. So either way he's good as long as he has money. Hopefully he moved all of his funds out of US banks before blowing his whistle. Otherwise freezing his funds will be one of the first things the US LEO thugs will do.
I see nothing wrong with the US government wiretapping its own citizens as long as they are lawfully elected by the same citizens.
So I'm guessing you're not a big fan of human rights. Would it be okay to exterminate certain minority groups as long as the government was lawfully elected?
First of all, I would like to formally invoke my First Amendment Privilege. For any dim-witted law and order types let me rephrase this: Don't taze me, bro!
It is true that there is no country that respects natural rights or any sort of real freedom, at least officially. However, as an on again off again expat myself and someone who plans to leave the US within the next year and probably never return, I'll let you in on the secret. Most other countries are not quite so efficient at actually stomping on the rights of its citizens. I'd like to say, "Nobody does it better" but there are probably a handful of countries which do. Laws on paper are one thing. How the human beings in charge of things choose to enforce them is another. In my own personal experience people in positions of power in the other countries I have lived in are just plain nicer, are less likely to be sociopaths or sadists or bullies. Are less likely to take pleasure from making you miserable or ruining your life. Think Carmen Ortiz. In many ways she is America. Or just search for police brutality on youtube. We may have a piece of paper which talks about freedom, real freedom, but our culture is intensely anti-intellectual, glorifies stupidity and violence and arrogance and selfishness and greed and might makes right. We invented the Dunning-Kruger Effect. More of us are behind bars than any other country in the world. We stand for punishment and revenge and bloodlust far more than we do for freedom. Here in the US I am afraid to even drive down the street. I might hit a roadblock which puts me into contact with some of the scariest, most violent, sadistc, and out of control police in the world. I believe we can compete with any country in that regard. Breaking even the most minor traffic law can put you into contact with these people.
The worst part about having grown up in the US is that we are taught that we have these things called "rights". Some 18th century Libertarian extremists (what we would call terrorists today) decided that they were no longer the property of their king, that they would break free of their chains (typical terrorists). They read a cheeky, British phiosopher named John Locke and liked his idea of natural rights, that human beings inherently had the right to be left alone to live their lives in peace without being the property of anyone. That violating these rights was wrong. Full stop. That must have seemed like an awfully good place from which to begin a new social experiment, a new kind of Government-No-Government. A sort of Anti-Government Government where the thirst for power and the intense human need to enslave and control others would be reigned in as had never been done before in all of human history. Never even tried. So, due to our history and immense cultural denial, of all people I think it is most disorienting and uncomfortable for us when we realize that our government has no respect for our so called rights. [Sorry. SCOTUS doesn't like that term. Privileges, I mean. Generously granted to us by our kind, thoughtful masters.]
It helps a lot to live abroad for a while. It sometimes allows the spell to be broken. It doesn't take long to realize that most other places just feel freer. It is realizing that you have a greater sense of freedom even in some communist countries that really tends to shock your monkey.
When we finally free ourselves from the cultural brainwashing we start to see that we are really no more free than the vast majority of human beings on the planet regardless of our silly slogans that ceased to have meaning long ago, and that constantly repeating to ourselves, like a mantra, that we are free, that we represent liberty and individualism doesn't make it so.
So they asked you a question and you cooperated fully by answering. You chose to start answering questions about some things but not about others. Then you did not even explicitly invoke your 5th amendment privilege. If you want them to grant you the privilege you gotta ask for it and you didn't. Also, you didn't say,"pretty please". Privilege REVOKED.
Sounds to me like they could have used the fact that you chose to remain silent without explicitly invoking the 5th amendmant privilege and after already answering one of their questions to imply that your choice to remain silent is a pretty obvious sign of guilt.
They're a matter of attractive women attracting attention.
Not this year. This crop of booth creatures were butt ugly. Check the photos someone linked to. Yikes! Looks like the beautiful people have lost this round.
Based on those pictures I think nearly all of them are ugly. Not even plain or average, but ugly and even fat. Unfortunately I posted the above before checking the linked photos. I have seen a larger percentage of pretty booth babes in previous years though. But this year I have to agree. No discrimination at E3. In fact, for a change my demographic (uglies) are getting the jobs instead of the beautiful people, but that's the exception not the rule. Maybe the beautiful girls don't want those jobs. Having to deal with a bunch of ugly guys? They'd be thinking, "No thanks!" I can't really blame them. I don't think I'd be any better. Ugly people are, well, ugly.
Agreed. I should have taken a look at those uglies before posting here. The only one that is even slightly pretty is the Turtle Beach blonde and maybe the blonde in the yellow plastic outfit. All the rest were actually quite ugly. Not even plain or average looking, but seriously ugly. Faces only a mother or a different species could love and some were fat. I'm an ugly middle aged geek who hasn't had sex for like a decade and even that I usually had to pay for and even I wouldn't be even slightly tempted by any of them except for Turtle Beach girl.
Maybe they think hiring ugly girls as booth "babes" is more politically correct. I bet the ugly girls were cheaper too. It makes me all warm and fuzzy to see my people (ugly people) taking jobs away from all those beautiful people with perfect lives. Although I think the ugly booth babes should unionize and seek equal pay to the pretty booth babes.
What I find a little scary is that maybe some of those companies literally believe that anything with breasts is attractive to geeks. It's pretty insulting in that sense. Being unattractive doesn't mean we have no taste.
So your issue is just with how they are dressed? Is this a form of fashion policing? I don't think the problem is with how they are dressed. They could all wear anoraks or Amish clothes with company logos and they would still be sexy and beautiful. Perhaps more so. They would still be idolized and admired and lusted after by ugly geeks like me. In a way they are also teasing/torturing us because we know and they know we could never have someone like that even if we lived for a thousand years. It's what I call the Fish Tank Problem: always pressing our unattractive faces up against the glass and longing for what we can never ever have. For an ugly geek, looking at a beautiful booth babe is bittersweet: enjoyable and painful at the same time.
Is your issue that they are not knowledgeable enough about the products they sell? That an ugly girl might have greater product knowledge? If so I agree. I think booth babes represent a shameless form of anti-ugly discrimination and that beautiful people should have to pay a price for their beauty, more than just a greater chance of being raped or molested by a relative, I mean. In any just soceity there would be penalties for such beauty. Their beauty represents a severe form of injustice. Perhaps the greatest form of injustice that exists in human life.
So we both want to get those hot booth babes fired. Maybe even burned at the stake like the witches that they probably are. I doubt even a single one has ever dated on ugly guy and most probably wouldn't even talk to or look at one voluntarily, and that is simply unforgivable.
But getting the booth babes fired is just the start. Then we have to work on getting all of the good looking people fired from their jobs as well and replaced with ugly people. There must be some attractive person whose job I can steal. They were almost certainly hired for their looks and that just isn't fair!
I disagree that booth babes represent any form of sexism. What it represents is a form of social injustice where the beautiful people are given opportunities that ugly people could never have. This is a form of prejudice. Ugly people are discriminated against in nearly every aspect of human life. It has been shown that those people who were born beautiful believe that happiness is their birthright and really are much more likely to achieve success financially and just in general. Beautiful people have huge advantages in nearly every aspect of life. Isn't it about time that we started cracking down on such injustice and inequality?
This is an area of life where affirmative action and quotas really could help. The problem isn't with what the booth babes are doing. The problem is that they were hired at all for any job when an ugly person is unemployed or is paid less solely because they are less attractive.
Join me and support true egalitarianism in happiness and overall life experience. Hiring a beautiful person should be treated the same as hiring someone from another country. A company should have to show that:
1. There is no ugly person who can do the job. In the case of booth babes this is almost certainly true which brings us to the next requirement.
2. The job itself that truly does require a beautiful person must be shown to be truly necessary, not just in terms of greater profits for shareholders, but for the greater good of society. Pornogrophy for instance can easily demonstrate a greater good, because it benefits ugly people who would never otherwise get to see a beautiful person without their clothes on. Booth babes might also serve to give ugly people an experience that they might never otherwise have: of interacting with one of the superior or super-race of beautiful people who would certainly ignore them if their jobs did not force such contact.
Prejudice against ugly people should not be tolerated in our modern world. Especially since ugly people are actually the majority. The beautiful people only exist at all because we allow it. It's about time they started to treat their inferiors with a bit more respect. They were born lucky. We were lucky to have been born at all. It's time to even the score.
I have a better scheme. All people should be rated by a very large group of people who themselves have been rated at least an 8/10 for their looks. This would be sort of like hotornot.com except that only the prettiest of the pretties would be able to vote on others. And serving on this board would be compulsory, part of the 4 years of public service that every citizen, male or female, with a appearance rating of 7 or greater must endure.
Those people with a rating of 5.5 or lower will be allowed 3-6 months of a girlfriend/boyfriend who as part of their government service must help out these less fortunate members of society who will never know the real happiness which only being born beautiful can provide, but will at least have a small taste of what they are missing before they die. These progressive government programs to help out the most needy and unhappy people in any society allow for a truly egalitarian society and true social justice. Money can be earned and saved, but nothing can make an ugly person beautiful. Ugly people and beautiful people live such different lives that they may as well not even be the same species.
I agree with most of your points here, but I think I should point out that this model of young pretty girls caring exclusively about looks until they start losing their own in their early 30s is a model that works best in first world countries. I know of a small number of third world countries where the older model where wealth trumped looks even for young, pretty girls continues to hold true. It is interesting to note however that even in most poor countries most pretty girls under 30 mostly ignore any male they don't find physically attractive.
Actually, women's attitudes don't change until they actually do lose their looks, which can happen as early as 27 or 28 if they are out in the sun a lot or as late as 36 or 37 if they are indoor types with the right genetics. There are also some interesting variations on the model. I am thinking of one particular country known for its beautiful women where the beautiful women tend to have almost none of the superior attitude that we are used to. They still will not date you if you are not sufficiently attractive, but they will not hesitate to talk to you and don't tend to treat you as if you are an insect that isn't even important enough for them to step on, which seems to be the dominant attitude of pretty girls in North America and much of Western Europe. Although they still won't date you if you aren't attractive they will treat you as their equal in every other respect. I was surprised at how refreshing I found that.
Were the booth babes topless this year? Bring on those pics!
I'm not sure what you are on about with objectification. Beautiful people of both sexes are desired and admired and, frankly, worshipped as superior creatures. I've never met a beautiful girl, at least in the US, who didn't view me as obviously inferior and not worthy of even the slightest glance. If there's any prejudice it's the beautiful people turning their little noses up in the air and sticking with their own kind.
I believe there is a strong parallel with aristocrats and peasants of a few centuries ago. The beautiful people are the new aristocracy. Only other beautiful people are worthy of their attention and interest. Ugly people are viewed with the same contempt and disgust that the nobles / aristocrats of the middle ages viewed peasants. Any interaction with them is avoided at all costs. It even dirties them slightly even to talk to them. Just like the aristocracy, the beautiful people are born that way and will retain that sense of privilege and superiorityfor their entire lives. The beautiful people consider success and happiness to be their birthright and they are not incorrect in that belief.
How does asking someone to spend some time with you make them objects? And, yes, if a booth babe were at a booth for CoD and I happened to like that game I would be more likely to ask about the game just to have an excuse to talk to her, a chance that in any other circumstance I wouldn't get. Attractive people can be useful for selling things because pretty much by definition they attract people. Ugly people repel people. We don't tend to do well in sales positions of any kind.
I've actually done the math (link budget calculations) and a 30 meter radio telescope is actually large enough to reach quite a bit further than Alpha Centuari. With an adequately powerful transmitter (a minimum power output of something like 300 kW with sufficiently long pulses (>= 0.3 milliseconds) and a sufficiently narrow band signal Gliese 581, at 20.3 ly, is well within its reach. With a megawatt you could get even quite a bit further than that. At least out to 50-60 ly. Of course a lot depends on the size of the dish on the othe end. This assumes a dish on the other end of only 30-60 meters or so and a frequency up in the X band at 9-12 Ghz as well as a relatively short attenuating journey through our atmosphere by aiming at less than 45 degrees from the zenith. Since it's quite likely that there will be multi-kilometer scale dishes on the other end this should be quite conservative. Unfortunately I haven't seen any numbers on the power of their transmitter. That information as well as the transmission frequency, pulse length, and bandwidth are all key to how far their signal will reach. For short pulse lengths (microseconds) and the resulting wide bandwiths you'd need a gigawatt scale transmitter, although the average power would be quite a bit less.
It's pretty much inevitable that someone is going to do this on any planet with intelligent life of the sort that can build radio telescopes. Short of a planetwide police state to detect such projects and eliminate them there's really not much that can be done to stop them.
The chances of there being any intelligent life on a star within 100 or even 250 ly are astronomically small and 18 ly is so close that any highly advanced species would probably already have detected the oxygen/nitrogen/methane/water vapor etc in our atmosphere and would have been attempting to contact us either in person or via EM wave modulation.
So why bother if it's so unlikely to succeed? Because we can and because we should at least make the effort to start eliminating nearby targets. Eventually, when we get to a search radius of a few hundred ly or so we may even succeed and then everything will change forever.
What they are doing is similar to what I want to do.
1. Build minimum 350 kW, 10 Ghz, long pulsed, pulse position modulated, Klystron / Gyrotron. 2. Build parabolic dish 20 meters or larger in diameter. Ideally at a latitude where your most important target star passes right above (at your zenith). 3. Aim dish at Gliese 581 or other interesting targets within 30-50 ly. 4. Profit ??? 5. After round trip time, if you are still alive, listen for a response.
We do need to make a profit in order to sustain the operating costs in order to keep doing it."
Ruh roh. I wonder what their "operating costs" are. Just the electricity to run the transmitter or are we talking salaries? Apparently someone bought the site that includes the beautiful fully driven 30 meter dish for something like 3 million.
I'd love to know what they are using for a transmitter and what frequency and modulation system they are planning. Pulsed or CW? Not really a lot of info in these press releases.
Do you have any idea how unlikely it is that there is someone listening at Gliese 526 or any other target less than100 light years from us? I'm guessing that you don't. BTW, Hawking is simply wrong about this issue.
I believe scientists already have a program like this, and it involves several countries.
Well you are wrong. There is no long term METI program anywhere in the world. This would be the first full time, long term attempt at METI / ASETI.
On top that that since radio and tv broadcasts having been in service that too is getting beamed into space. And if Aliens have been listening to those, they are pretty much going to stay away.
They haven't because those signals are pretty much indistinguishable from noise even at a few light years away. Also, I think alien cavemen would be pretty interesting to us. At least some aliens would find us intriguing enough to study and maybe attempt to communicate with. The fact that we are so primitive and stupid might make us more interesting, not less.
That is a myth more or less. Those transmissions would be damn lucky to make it to Pluto let alone another star. Maybe to Alpha Centauri if there is a kilometer scale dish there.
Transmitting a signal to another star is non-trivial, uses a huge amount of power, and isn't likely to happen with unintentional leakage. You pretty much have to either aim a beam at a target or have an omnidirectional transmitter with truly immense power.
James Benford, along with his twin brother Gregory Benford (Timescape etc) has written some fascinating papers on the subject from the POV of the sender and the receiver. Very well thought out stuff and required reading for any amateur METI projects. But this won't be the first intentional METI transmission anyway. Alexander Zaitsev has sent a number of messages at various targets already using a 70 meter radio telescope in the Ukraine. Those were relatively brief transmissions though. This project will be transmitting continuously. A pretty big difference, although one that would only matter to a pathetic, cowardly species.
Those radio broadcasts are unlikely to even make it to Alpha Centauri with reasonable sized recieving antennas. With planetary scale antennas it might be possible. The military radars are another story, but they would be randomly aimed and relatively infrequent and not transmitting any sort of coherent message.
This wouldn't be the first attempt at METI. Alexander Zaitsev has sent a number of messages to various stars including Gliese 581 using his 70 meter RT-70 radiotescope located in Yevpatoria, Ukraine. He is the chief advocate for METI among professional astronomers and makes his case well I think.
His messages were relatively brief however and are unlikely to be noticed even if there is an intelligent civ at one of his chosen targets. What would new is the idea of a full time, dedicated transmitter sending messages out 24/7/365 aimed for long periods, like say 6-12 months, at a single target so that if anyone is there listening there would be at least some chance of them noticing our signal.
Don't let it bother you because there is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop these sorts of projects. Anyone with a an advanced physics degree can figure out how to build a klystron or gyrotron and a small parabolic antenna based on existing documentation.
I'm not sure why you claim there is no upside. The upside is obvious. Although it is very unlikely we cannot completely rule out the idea of not just life, but intelligent life of the sort that builds radio telescopes living at some nearby star like Gliese 581. The least we can do as intelligent creatures ourselves is to attempt communication. You at least should be willing to admit that it is pretty pathetic and cowardly if we are not even willing to make the slightest effort in that direction simply out of fear.
Yup. Monoculture was the first thing I thought of. That's why we can only get bland Cavendish bananas in the US now, which rot before they will sweeten, instead of sweet, delicious Gros Michels. Panama disease killed off the vast majority of Gros Michel bananas and the Cavendish was selected solely for its resistance to that disease. Not for its taste.
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Bullshit. The US wants him badly. Very badly. Short of obvious assassination attempts on foreign soil, they are doing everything in their power to get him to Gitmo, but they are too stupid and incompetent. The whole world is laughing at them and smiling as their quarry slips from their grasp forever. And I am cheering as this hero gives the finger to the USDOJ and the rest of the corrupt, thuggish government as he exposes all of their illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional behavior. I'm hoping that this is one of the few times where the good guy actually wins. For once, perhaps a good deed will go at least somewhat unpunished. I wish him a happy life in Ecuador. It's a nicer place to live than the US anyway.
He's clearly not planning to stay in Russia. He doesn't even have a visa, which is not easy to get on short notice, but why would Russia consider him a traitor? If he were to give them information about NSA operations he would be a patriot from their perspective.
He can spend up to 3 months in Cuba on a tourist visa. Obviously the Cuban government isn't going to extradite him and Cubana won't be sending the US any flight lists. This point is perhaps the most important. Cuba is a place where Snowdon can break the paper trail. He can stay anywhere from 1 to 90 days there and then procede to his final destination.
The only risk to this strategy is that the Cuban government may want to ask him a few questions about the NSA before allowing him to leave. Assuming the Cuban government allows him to leave I would guess Ecuador. It's obviously willing to protect whistle blowers and Assange could have discussed the matter directly with officials at his embassy. According to this list Ecuador does have an extradition treaty with the US though, but maybe it is just for murders and other violent crime. I think Ecuador and Venezuela are both nice places to live. So either way he's good as long as he has money. Hopefully he moved all of his funds out of US banks before blowing his whistle. Otherwise freezing his funds will be one of the first things the US LEO thugs will do.
I see nothing wrong with the US government wiretapping its own citizens as long as they are lawfully elected by the same citizens.
So I'm guessing you're not a big fan of human rights. Would it be okay to exterminate certain minority groups as long as the government was lawfully elected?
Actually there is no such thing as Al Qaida. Well at least not until the US government invented them.
First of all, I would like to formally invoke my First Amendment Privilege. For any dim-witted law and order types let me rephrase this: Don't taze me, bro!
It is true that there is no country that respects natural rights or any sort of real freedom, at least officially. However, as an on again off again expat myself and someone who plans to leave the US within the next year and probably never return, I'll let you in on the secret. Most other countries are not quite so efficient at actually stomping on the rights of its citizens. I'd like to say, "Nobody does it better" but there are probably a handful of countries which do. Laws on paper are one thing. How the human beings in charge of things choose to enforce them is another. In my own personal experience people in positions of power in the other countries I have lived in are just plain nicer, are less likely to be sociopaths or sadists or bullies. Are less likely to take pleasure from making you miserable or ruining your life. Think Carmen Ortiz. In many ways she is America. Or just search for police brutality on youtube. We may have a piece of paper which talks about freedom, real freedom, but our culture is intensely anti-intellectual, glorifies stupidity and violence and arrogance and selfishness and greed and might makes right. We invented the Dunning-Kruger Effect. More of us are behind bars than any other country in the world. We stand for punishment and revenge and bloodlust far more than we do for freedom. Here in the US I am afraid to even drive down the street. I might hit a roadblock which puts me into contact with some of the scariest, most violent, sadistc, and out of control police in the world. I believe we can compete with any country in that regard. Breaking even the most minor traffic law can put you into contact with these people.
The worst part about having grown up in the US is that we are taught that we have these things called "rights". Some 18th century Libertarian extremists (what we would call terrorists today) decided that they were no longer the property of their king, that they would break free of their chains (typical terrorists). They read a cheeky, British phiosopher named John Locke and liked his idea of natural rights, that human beings inherently had the right to be left alone to live their lives in peace without being the property of anyone. That violating these rights was wrong. Full stop. That must have seemed like an awfully good place from which to begin a new social experiment, a new kind of Government-No-Government. A sort of Anti-Government Government where the thirst for power and the intense human need to enslave and control others would be reigned in as had never been done before in all of human history. Never even tried. So, due to our history and immense cultural denial, of all people I think it is most disorienting and uncomfortable for us when we realize that our government has no respect for our so called rights. [Sorry. SCOTUS doesn't like that term. Privileges, I mean. Generously granted to us by our kind, thoughtful masters.]
It helps a lot to live abroad for a while. It sometimes allows the spell to be broken. It doesn't take long to realize that most other places just feel freer. It is realizing that you have a greater sense of freedom even in some communist countries that really tends to shock your monkey.
When we finally free ourselves from the cultural brainwashing we start to see that we are really no more free than the vast majority of human beings on the planet regardless of our silly slogans that ceased to have meaning long ago, and that constantly repeating to ourselves, like a mantra, that we are free, that we represent liberty and individualism doesn't make it so.
They asked me [something].
So they asked you a question and you cooperated fully by answering. You chose to start answering questions about some things but not about others. Then you did not even explicitly invoke your 5th amendment privilege. If you want them to grant you the privilege you gotta ask for it and you didn't. Also, you didn't say,"pretty please". Privilege REVOKED.
Sounds to me like they could have used the fact that you chose to remain silent without explicitly invoking the 5th amendmant privilege and after already answering one of their questions to imply that your choice to remain silent is a pretty obvious sign of guilt.
They're a matter of attractive women attracting attention.
Not this year. This crop of booth creatures were butt ugly. Check the photos someone linked to. Yikes! Looks like the beautiful people have lost this round.
Based on those pictures I think nearly all of them are ugly. Not even plain or average, but ugly and even fat. Unfortunately I posted the above before checking the linked photos. I have seen a larger percentage of pretty booth babes in previous years though. But this year I have to agree. No discrimination at E3. In fact, for a change my demographic (uglies) are getting the jobs instead of the beautiful people, but that's the exception not the rule. Maybe the beautiful girls don't want those jobs. Having to deal with a bunch of ugly guys? They'd be thinking, "No thanks!" I can't really blame them. I don't think I'd be any better. Ugly people are, well, ugly.
Agreed. I should have taken a look at those uglies before posting here. The only one that is even slightly pretty is the Turtle Beach blonde and maybe the blonde in the yellow plastic outfit. All the rest were actually quite ugly. Not even plain or average looking, but seriously ugly. Faces only a mother or a different species could love and some were fat. I'm an ugly middle aged geek who hasn't had sex for like a decade and even that I usually had to pay for and even I wouldn't be even slightly tempted by any of them except for Turtle Beach girl.
Maybe they think hiring ugly girls as booth "babes" is more politically correct. I bet the ugly girls were cheaper too. It makes me all warm and fuzzy to see my people (ugly people) taking jobs away from all those beautiful people with perfect lives. Although I think the ugly booth babes should unionize and seek equal pay to the pretty booth babes.
What I find a little scary is that maybe some of those companies literally believe that anything with breasts is attractive to geeks. It's pretty insulting in that sense. Being unattractive doesn't mean we have no taste.
So your issue is just with how they are dressed? Is this a form of fashion policing? I don't think the problem is with how they are dressed. They could all wear anoraks or Amish clothes with company logos and they would still be sexy and beautiful. Perhaps more so. They would still be idolized and admired and lusted after by ugly geeks like me. In a way they are also teasing/torturing us because we know and they know we could never have someone like that even if we lived for a thousand years. It's what I call the Fish Tank Problem: always pressing our unattractive faces up against the glass and longing for what we can never ever have. For an ugly geek, looking at a beautiful booth babe is bittersweet: enjoyable and painful at the same time.
Is your issue that they are not knowledgeable enough about the products they sell? That an ugly girl might have greater product knowledge? If so I agree. I think booth babes represent a shameless form of anti-ugly discrimination and that beautiful people should have to pay a price for their beauty, more than just a greater chance of being raped or molested by a relative, I mean. In any just soceity there would be penalties for such beauty. Their beauty represents a severe form of injustice. Perhaps the greatest form of injustice that exists in human life.
So we both want to get those hot booth babes fired. Maybe even burned at the stake like the witches that they probably are. I doubt even a single one has ever dated on ugly guy and most probably wouldn't even talk to or look at one voluntarily, and that is simply unforgivable.
But getting the booth babes fired is just the start. Then we have to work on getting all of the good looking people fired from their jobs as well and replaced with ugly people. There must be some attractive person whose job I can steal. They were almost certainly hired for their looks and that just isn't fair!
I disagree that booth babes represent any form of sexism. What it represents is a form of social injustice where the beautiful people are given opportunities that ugly people could never have. This is a form of prejudice. Ugly people are discriminated against in nearly every aspect of human life. It has been shown that those people who were born beautiful believe that happiness is their birthright and really are much more likely to achieve success financially and just in general. Beautiful people have huge advantages in nearly every aspect of life. Isn't it about time that we started cracking down on such injustice and inequality?
This is an area of life where affirmative action and quotas really could help. The problem isn't with what the booth babes are doing. The problem is that they were hired at all for any job when an ugly person is unemployed or is paid less solely because they are less attractive.
Join me and support true egalitarianism in happiness and overall life experience. Hiring a beautiful person should be treated the same as hiring someone from another country. A company should have to show that:
1. There is no ugly person who can do the job. In the case of booth babes this is almost certainly true which brings us to the next requirement.
2. The job itself that truly does require a beautiful person must be shown to be truly necessary, not just in terms of greater profits for shareholders, but for the greater good of society. Pornogrophy for instance can easily demonstrate a greater good, because it benefits ugly people who would never otherwise get to see a beautiful person without their clothes on. Booth babes might also serve to give ugly people an experience that they might never otherwise have: of interacting with one of the superior or super-race of beautiful people who would certainly ignore them if their jobs did not force such contact.
Prejudice against ugly people should not be tolerated in our modern world. Especially since ugly people are actually the majority. The beautiful people only exist at all because we allow it. It's about time they started to treat their inferiors with a bit more respect. They were born lucky. We were lucky to have been born at all. It's time to even the score.
I have a better scheme. All people should be rated by a very large group of people who themselves have been rated at least an 8/10 for their looks. This would be sort of like hotornot.com except that only the prettiest of the pretties would be able to vote on others. And serving on this board would be compulsory, part of the 4 years of public service that every citizen, male or female, with a appearance rating of 7 or greater must endure.
Those people with a rating of 5.5 or lower will be allowed 3-6 months of a girlfriend/boyfriend who as part of their government service must help out these less fortunate members of society who will never know the real happiness which only being born beautiful can provide, but will at least have a small taste of what they are missing before they die. These progressive government programs to help out the most needy and unhappy people in any society allow for a truly egalitarian society and true social justice. Money can be earned and saved, but nothing can make an ugly person beautiful. Ugly people and beautiful people live such different lives that they may as well not even be the same species.
I agree with most of your points here, but I think I should point out that this model of young pretty girls caring exclusively about looks until they start losing their own in their early 30s is a model that works best in first world countries. I know of a small number of third world countries where the older model where wealth trumped looks even for young, pretty girls continues to hold true. It is interesting to note however that even in most poor countries most pretty girls under 30 mostly ignore any male they don't find physically attractive.
Actually, women's attitudes don't change until they actually do lose their looks, which can happen as early as 27 or 28 if they are out in the sun a lot or as late as 36 or 37 if they are indoor types with the right genetics. There are also some interesting variations on the model. I am thinking of one particular country known for its beautiful women where the beautiful women tend to have almost none of the superior attitude that we are used to. They still will not date you if you are not sufficiently attractive, but they will not hesitate to talk to you and don't tend to treat you as if you are an insect that isn't even important enough for them to step on, which seems to be the dominant attitude of pretty girls in North America and much of Western Europe. Although they still won't date you if you aren't attractive they will treat you as their equal in every other respect. I was surprised at how refreshing I found that.
hired muscular guys to stand around shirtless
Were the booth babes topless this year? Bring on those pics!
I'm not sure what you are on about with objectification. Beautiful people of both sexes are desired and admired and, frankly, worshipped as superior creatures. I've never met a beautiful girl, at least in the US, who didn't view me as obviously inferior and not worthy of even the slightest glance. If there's any prejudice it's the beautiful people turning their little noses up in the air and sticking with their own kind.
I believe there is a strong parallel with aristocrats and peasants of a few centuries ago. The beautiful people are the new aristocracy. Only other beautiful people are worthy of their attention and interest. Ugly people are viewed with the same contempt and disgust that the nobles / aristocrats of the middle ages viewed peasants. Any interaction with them is avoided at all costs. It even dirties them slightly even to talk to them. Just like the aristocracy, the beautiful people are born that way and will retain that sense of privilege and superiority for their entire lives. The beautiful people consider success and happiness to be their birthright and they are not incorrect in that belief.
How does asking someone to spend some time with you make them objects? And, yes, if a booth babe were at a booth for CoD and I happened to like that game I would be more likely to ask about the game just to have an excuse to talk to her, a chance that in any other circumstance I wouldn't get. Attractive people can be useful for selling things because pretty much by definition they attract people. Ugly people repel people. We don't tend to do well in sales positions of any kind.
I've actually done the math (link budget calculations) and a 30 meter radio telescope is actually large enough to reach quite a bit further than Alpha Centuari. With an adequately powerful transmitter (a minimum power output of something like 300 kW with sufficiently long pulses (>= 0.3 milliseconds) and a sufficiently narrow band signal Gliese 581, at 20.3 ly, is well within its reach. With a megawatt you could get even quite a bit further than that. At least out to 50-60 ly. Of course a lot depends on the size of the dish on the othe end. This assumes a dish on the other end of only 30-60 meters or so and a frequency up in the X band at 9-12 Ghz as well as a relatively short attenuating journey through our atmosphere by aiming at less than 45 degrees from the zenith. Since it's quite likely that there will be multi-kilometer scale dishes on the other end this should be quite conservative. Unfortunately I haven't seen any numbers on the power of their transmitter. That information as well as the transmission frequency, pulse length, and bandwidth are all key to how far their signal will reach. For short pulse lengths (microseconds) and the resulting wide bandwiths you'd need a gigawatt scale transmitter, although the average power would be quite a bit less.
It's pretty much inevitable that someone is going to do this on any planet with intelligent life of the sort that can build radio telescopes. Short of a planetwide police state to detect such projects and eliminate them there's really not much that can be done to stop them.
The chances of there being any intelligent life on a star within 100 or even 250 ly are astronomically small and 18 ly is so close that any highly advanced species would probably already have detected the oxygen/nitrogen/methane/water vapor etc in our atmosphere and would have been attempting to contact us either in person or via EM wave modulation.
So why bother if it's so unlikely to succeed? Because we can and because we should at least make the effort to start eliminating nearby targets. Eventually, when we get to a search radius of a few hundred ly or so we may even succeed and then everything will change forever.
What they are doing is similar to what I want to do.
1. Build minimum 350 kW, 10 Ghz, long pulsed, pulse position modulated, Klystron / Gyrotron.
2. Build parabolic dish 20 meters or larger in diameter. Ideally at a latitude where your most important target star passes right above (at your zenith).
3. Aim dish at Gliese 581 or other interesting targets within 30-50 ly.
4. Profit ???
5. After round trip time, if you are still alive, listen for a response.
We do need to make a profit in order to sustain the operating costs in order to keep doing it."
Ruh roh. I wonder what their "operating costs" are. Just the electricity to run the transmitter or are we talking salaries? Apparently someone bought the site that includes the beautiful fully driven 30 meter dish for something like 3 million.
I'd love to know what they are using for a transmitter and what frequency and modulation system they are planning. Pulsed or CW? Not really a lot of info in these press releases.
Do you have any idea how unlikely it is that there is someone listening at Gliese 526 or any other target less than100 light years from us? I'm guessing that you don't. BTW, Hawking is simply wrong about this issue.
I believe scientists already have a program like this, and it involves several countries.
Well you are wrong. There is no long term METI program anywhere in the world. This would be the first full time, long term attempt at METI / ASETI.
On top that that since radio and tv broadcasts having been in service that too is getting beamed into space. And if Aliens have been listening to those, they are pretty much going to stay away.
They haven't because those signals are pretty much indistinguishable from noise even at a few light years away. Also, I think alien cavemen would be pretty interesting to us. At least some aliens would find us intriguing enough to study and maybe attempt to communicate with. The fact that we are so primitive and stupid might make us more interesting, not less.
That is a myth more or less. Those transmissions would be damn lucky to make it to Pluto let alone another star. Maybe to Alpha Centauri if there is a kilometer scale dish there.
Transmitting a signal to another star is non-trivial, uses a huge amount of power, and isn't likely to happen with unintentional leakage. You pretty much have to either aim a beam at a target or have an omnidirectional transmitter with truly immense power.
James Benford, along with his twin brother Gregory Benford (Timescape etc) has written some fascinating papers on the subject from the POV of the sender and the receiver. Very well thought out stuff and required reading for any amateur METI projects. But this won't be the first intentional METI transmission anyway. Alexander Zaitsev has sent a number of messages at various targets already using a 70 meter radio telescope in the Ukraine. Those were relatively brief transmissions though. This project will be transmitting continuously. A pretty big difference, although one that would only matter to a pathetic, cowardly species.
Those radio broadcasts are unlikely to even make it to Alpha Centauri with reasonable sized recieving antennas. With planetary scale antennas it might be possible. The military radars are another story, but they would be randomly aimed and relatively infrequent and not transmitting any sort of coherent message.
This wouldn't be the first attempt at METI. Alexander Zaitsev has sent a number of messages to various stars including Gliese 581 using his 70 meter RT-70 radiotescope located in Yevpatoria, Ukraine. He is the chief advocate for METI among professional astronomers and makes his case well I think.
His messages were relatively brief however and are unlikely to be noticed even if there is an intelligent civ at one of his chosen targets. What would new is the idea of a full time, dedicated transmitter sending messages out 24/7/365 aimed for long periods, like say 6-12 months, at a single target so that if anyone is there listening there would be at least some chance of them noticing our signal.
Don't let it bother you because there is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop these sorts of projects. Anyone with a an advanced physics degree can figure out how to build a klystron or gyrotron and a small parabolic antenna based on existing documentation.
I'm not sure why you claim there is no upside. The upside is obvious. Although it is very unlikely we cannot completely rule out the idea of not just life, but intelligent life of the sort that builds radio telescopes living at some nearby star like Gliese 581. The least we can do as intelligent creatures ourselves is to attempt communication. You at least should be willing to admit that it is pretty pathetic and cowardly if we are not even willing to make the slightest effort in that direction simply out of fear.
Yup. Monoculture was the first thing I thought of. That's why we can only get bland Cavendish bananas in the US now, which rot before they will sweeten, instead of sweet, delicious Gros Michels. Panama disease killed off the vast majority of Gros Michel bananas and the Cavendish was selected solely for its resistance to that disease. Not for its taste.