I actually have nightmares about innocently watching channel 4 and then seeing that eye flash on the screen for a split second. It's not that the eye which scares me but the knowledge that all enjoyment of watching TV is going to be completely destroyed in a couple of weeks time.
And you just now that on the next Big Brother, Channel 4 will come up with another publicity stunt like the whole "racist comments" thing from last time so all other media outlets will once again also be showing Big Brother.
Come to think of it, I'm going to go make a noose to keep beside the couch so that if I do see that eye flash on the screen I can go just kill myself right there and then. Drastic maybe, but I'll still be laughing at the rest of you in Britain who will just have to put up with 2 months of that god-awful program!
From what I understand, these are actually quite far from definite and in particular are struggling to get the funding necessary (personally I think Stargate needs a big budget to do it justice), although I may be a little behind the times on the status of these movies. Do you know exactly what there current status is and if they are definitely going to be made and be given a budget worthy of Stargate?
Here in the U.K. Season 10 has already completely run and finished (although episode 20 left many doors open so to speak) and there are indeed no new episodes planned to be aired. The Stargate SG-1 show is for all intents and purposes "cancelled". I sure hope they change their minds but I do think the grand-poster is correct in stating that the show has been "cancelled", even if the showbiz lingo is to claim a new series just "hasn't been commissioned" which is really saying the exact same thing just put in words that are designed to falsely raise hopes of fans.
Lets just hope that Stargate Universe can in some-way match the awesomeness that is/was Stargate SG-1.
I have recently started using http://www.last.fm/ which is a really cool site. It uses your music library to generate recommendations and even a radio station (all for free) based on what other people with similar music to you also have (and a bunch of other factors I think).
But I'll have to investigate this site also as it seems to take a more blog-orientated approach.
Just checked out a few of the bands you listed and your right, their not bad at all.
The Klaxons in particular rock!
Might go buy either their album or one of Patrick Wolf's, who also rocks.
Thanks for a great post. Who needs Last.fm with post like that?
That would be good, but at least the EU is currently fining the pants off them, which is a start. No company can continually take half a billion dollar fines year after year without seeing shareholders getting pretty angry.
Everything else about Britain may suck arse, but at least we have good beer & music! At the end of the day that is all that really matters in my opinion....now I'm off down the pub.
"By all means refer to recent music by (predominantly) black artists as MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) or some other unique name but please DO NOT hijack the name "R&B" (Rhythm and Blues) when describing that kind of music alone.
I couldn't agree more!!! But it's not me who's hijacked the name, it's the million and one artists, their publishers and the media which have hijacked the name.
And the fact that Q1 of 2007 has had virtually no decent new music released couldn't have anything to do with it?
This is a time when the R&B era is over and Hip-hop is on the decline. Traditional Pop music seems to have all but vanished, rock music has never recovered since the 90's and Punk for several years has been hit & miss.
"I meant morality is based on primitive selective advantage and group-selective advantage, and religion has been built on top of that."
This is where I disagree, I think morality and religion are completely unrelated in origin, they just happen to define rules which affect a common activity: human social interact, but then many other things (e.g. sports) also defines rules in this area.
"Adultery in particular goes back to the more primitive basis for morality, where an alpha individual maintains strict control over members of the pack and dictates behavior (such as who can/can't mate with whom) through the threat of injuring or killing those who go against the alpha's wishes."
That is only the case in a specific - albeit well-publicised - subset of social group animals. There are many social animals who do not abide by this pattern and there is no evidence that this patten was evident in early humans (and indeed it is not seen in our most common genetic relatives: Chimpanzees and Bonobos).
"Until fairly recently (a mere moment in the evolutionary timescale), males were depended upon for hunting of food, part of farming duties, and protection of the family."
Again, there is no physical evidence for this and close relatives (e.g. Chimpanzees, Bonobos and most other primates) do not rely purely on the males for hunting.
I suppose it is called a spell-checker after all and it does do that well enough. It's the spell-correcting facilities which leave a lot to be desired.
Now if only they could get a spelling suggestion system which doesn't suck, that would be good.
Personally, I'm sick and tired of Firefox's spell-checker coming up with ridiculous suggestions when I've only mis-spelt a single letter or two. I know Microsoft Office acquired the patent for the only decent spell-checker algorithm and Firefox doesn't have the capability to do a funky statistical analysis like Google, but surely they can come up with a spell checker which isn't almost completely useless!
"but the fundamental morality of religion is still based upon group-selective advantage from a time even before superstition."
Although I agree with elements of your post, I would disagree that all religions are based on group-selective advantage. Many fundamental morals of religions are arbitrary ones which have nothing to do with group-selective advantage - or any other advantage for that matter - but are simply required in order to follow the respective religious doctrine. Some even work completely against the social group, the immorality of Adultery as preached in Christianity (and the other Abrahamic religions) is an obvious example (e.g. if a married man is in infertile then it makes complete sense for that woman to be seek fertilisation from elsewhere, as has been observed in many other social animals which are otherwise monogamous).
There are countless other examples which can be applied to all religions. I think though you had it right at the start of your second paragraph, "Religion, on the other hand, has its roots in superstition". At the end of the day, superstition is what all religion boils down to.
No it isn't. If the "rules of conduct" aren't followed then the society would break-down or at least not function as efficiently. The various advantages of living in a social group (protection, hunting, mating) would then decrease or be completely lost.
The implication is that morality isn't due so much to a inherent "moral code" (which is a real religious spin on the observed behaviour, if you ask me) but more simply a genetic trait which facilitates habitation within groups. This group habitation then provides the various evolutionary advantages listed above.
"But any animal that is able to care for its young is capable of some form of empathy."
Not really, animals caring for their young are showing instinct, not empathy. They do it simply because the behaviour is in their genes. This makes their young more likely to survive, which makes the "caring for young" gene propagate. They wouldn't care for their elderly, infertile relatives however because that gene has evolution working against it.
Sure, Al Gore's film made a fair amount of money (although he claims to have donated it all), but unlike the various Energy industry studies (which have an obvious incentive to deny man-made climate change), who exactly do you think has the incentive to give massive amounts of cash to studies which conclude that man-made climate change is occurring?
"So then "to intervene introduces moral repercussions" is the only universal moral law?"
No, as I keep saying there is no universal moral law. You can base your actions on a perceived 'rightness' or whatever, it doesn't really make a difference at the end of the day.
You are free to have an opinion on whatever you see, wherever you see it. But to intervene, in any way or form introduces moral repercussions. The whole point of my original post though was that there is no "universal moral code", there is only personal and society specific morals (and even those change dramatically with time).
You would be applying your own morals on the situation to "change" things, to say you are making things "better" is incorrect. They might be better in your opinion but that doesn't mean they are universally "better", such a statement is impossible unless you are omniscient, which is itself impossible (ignoring wacky religious views - which don't even make sense - of course).
I do live in Europe and love the freedoms and morals enjoyed by its citizens. But I don't for one minute kid myself to believe that they from some sort of block of "universal" morals that everyone should "discover". To presume such would itself be "immoral" by the moral standards expressed in that post.
Firstly: those "rules" are so vague that they are virtually meaningless
Second: One could come up with countless examples of those "laws" contradicting each other (e.g. what if your 'job' is that of a thief?, the institutional theft from and murdering of the Jews was permitted by Nazi law, most still consider those acts immoral)
Third: The entire assertion is simply false. Some societies don't view "not doing your job" as immoral, some societies deem lying as exceptable (e.g. white lies)
You have just taken a bunch of Christian / Western ethical rules and pretended that they are 1) universal and 2) concrete, when in fact they are neither.
(What I mean is, we are, as a society, more humane now, in general anyway, than we have been pretty much any time in history ever, so maybe we shouldn't worry about a slippery slope that we have been *climbing* for 5000 years.)
This statement is so naive it's funny!
Every Society has always claimed to be the "most humane". Concepts like "humanity" and "morals" are extremely subjective terms that are constantly redefined based on the the society in question's ethical standpoint of the day.
To many other societies, both past a present, the West is extremely inhumane and grossly immoral. The point is that there is no "universal ethics", it's all completely subjective.
Fortunately any decent peer-to-peer system has methods for controlling such threats.
The need for data to "change lanes" is an extremely common occurrence in peer-to-peer networks. Modern peer-to-peer systems generally handle the situation extremely well. The fact that your computer doesn't instantly crash with thousands of requests whenever you join a gnutella network shows that the concept is well handled.
The German system described in TFA seems designed to stop everyone instantly switching lanes, as one would expect.
I think there is a fundamental difference though in that for over a decade now Microsoft has been able to convince people all around the world to part with hundreds of dollars, pounds, euros, yen and whatever else for their core products (Windows and Office), and many of their other products do also make a profit. Google has yet to launch a single application that can do this.
They do make a fair amount of money through their ad system but they are yet to produce anything else which isn't running at a loss. Besides, most stock-market analysts will agree that unless Google can pull something out of their hat in the next few years, their valuation is simply insane.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I don't know which one is worse.
I actually have nightmares about innocently watching channel 4 and then seeing that eye flash on the screen for a split second. It's not that the eye which scares me but the knowledge that all enjoyment of watching TV is going to be completely destroyed in a couple of weeks time.
And you just now that on the next Big Brother, Channel 4 will come up with another publicity stunt like the whole "racist comments" thing from last time so all other media outlets will once again also be showing Big Brother.
Come to think of it, I'm going to go make a noose to keep beside the couch so that if I do see that eye flash on the screen I can go just kill myself right there and then. Drastic maybe, but I'll still be laughing at the rest of you in Britain who will just have to put up with 2 months of that god-awful program!
From what I understand, these are actually quite far from definite and in particular are struggling to get the funding necessary (personally I think Stargate needs a big budget to do it justice), although I may be a little behind the times on the status of these movies. Do you know exactly what there current status is and if they are definitely going to be made and be given a budget worthy of Stargate?
It depends where he lives.
Here in the U.K. Season 10 has already completely run and finished (although episode 20 left many doors open so to speak) and there are indeed no new episodes planned to be aired. The Stargate SG-1 show is for all intents and purposes "cancelled". I sure hope they change their minds but I do think the grand-poster is correct in stating that the show has been "cancelled", even if the showbiz lingo is to claim a new series just "hasn't been commissioned" which is really saying the exact same thing just put in words that are designed to falsely raise hopes of fans.
Lets just hope that Stargate Universe can in some-way match the awesomeness that is/was Stargate SG-1.
Ah cool, I shall have to explore the site.
I have recently started using http://www.last.fm/ which is a really cool site. It uses your music library to generate recommendations and even a radio station (all for free) based on what other people with similar music to you also have (and a bunch of other factors I think).
But I'll have to investigate this site also as it seems to take a more blog-orientated approach.
Just checked out a few of the bands you listed and your right, their not bad at all. The Klaxons in particular rock! Might go buy either their album or one of Patrick Wolf's, who also rocks. Thanks for a great post. Who needs Last.fm with post like that?
That would be good, but at least the EU is currently fining the pants off them, which is a start. No company can continually take half a billion dollar fines year after year without seeing shareholders getting pretty angry.
You are 100% spot on!
...now I'm off down the pub.
Everything else about Britain may suck arse, but at least we have good beer & music!
At the end of the day that is all that really matters in my opinion.
"By all means refer to recent music by (predominantly) black artists as MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) or some other unique name but please DO NOT hijack the name "R&B" (Rhythm and Blues) when describing that kind of music alone.
I couldn't agree more!!! But it's not me who's hijacked the name, it's the million and one artists, their publishers and the media which have hijacked the name.
I agree with most of your other points.
And the fact that Q1 of 2007 has had virtually no decent new music released couldn't have anything to do with it?
This is a time when the R&B era is over and Hip-hop is on the decline. Traditional Pop music seems to have all but vanished, rock music has never recovered since the 90's and Punk for several years has been hit & miss.
Is anyone surprised people are buying less music?
"I meant morality is based on primitive selective advantage and group-selective advantage, and religion has been built on top of that."
This is where I disagree, I think morality and religion are completely unrelated in origin, they just happen to define rules which affect a common activity: human social interact, but then many other things (e.g. sports) also defines rules in this area.
"Adultery in particular goes back to the more primitive basis for morality, where an alpha individual maintains strict control over members of the pack and dictates behavior (such as who can/can't mate with whom) through the threat of injuring or killing those who go against the alpha's wishes."
That is only the case in a specific - albeit well-publicised - subset of social group animals. There are many social animals who do not abide by this pattern and there is no evidence that this patten was evident in early humans (and indeed it is not seen in our most common genetic relatives: Chimpanzees and Bonobos).
"Until fairly recently (a mere moment in the evolutionary timescale), males were depended upon for hunting of food, part of farming duties, and protection of the family."
Again, there is no physical evidence for this and close relatives (e.g. Chimpanzees, Bonobos and most other primates) do not rely purely on the males for hunting.
I suppose it is called a spell-checker after all and it does do that well enough. It's the spell-correcting facilities which leave a lot to be desired.
Now if only they could get a spelling suggestion system which doesn't suck, that would be good.
Personally, I'm sick and tired of Firefox's spell-checker coming up with ridiculous suggestions when I've only mis-spelt a single letter or two. I know Microsoft Office acquired the patent for the only decent spell-checker algorithm and Firefox doesn't have the capability to do a funky statistical analysis like Google, but surely they can come up with a spell checker which isn't almost completely useless!
Oh well, Rant over.
"but the fundamental morality of religion is still based upon group-selective advantage from a time even before superstition."
Although I agree with elements of your post, I would disagree that all religions are based on group-selective advantage. Many fundamental morals of religions are arbitrary ones which have nothing to do with group-selective advantage - or any other advantage for that matter - but are simply required in order to follow the respective religious doctrine. Some even work completely against the social group, the immorality of Adultery as preached in Christianity (and the other Abrahamic religions) is an obvious example (e.g. if a married man is in infertile then it makes complete sense for that woman to be seek fertilisation from elsewhere, as has been observed in many other social animals which are otherwise monogamous).
There are countless other examples which can be applied to all religions. I think though you had it right at the start of your second paragraph, "Religion, on the other hand, has its roots in superstition". At the end of the day, superstition is what all religion boils down to.
No it isn't. If the "rules of conduct" aren't followed then the society would break-down or at least not function as efficiently. The various advantages of living in a social group (protection, hunting, mating) would then decrease or be completely lost.
The implication is that morality isn't due so much to a inherent "moral code" (which is a real religious spin on the observed behaviour, if you ask me) but more simply a genetic trait which facilitates habitation within groups. This group habitation then provides the various evolutionary advantages listed above.
"But any animal that is able to care for its young is capable of some form of empathy."
Not really, animals caring for their young are showing instinct, not empathy. They do it simply because the behaviour is in their genes. This makes their young more likely to survive, which makes the "caring for young" gene propagate. They wouldn't care for their elderly, infertile relatives however because that gene has evolution working against it.
"is at the very least a strong statement about morality..."
Why?
And its only circular if you presume their are moral laws. Existence of phenomena needs proving, not disproving.
Sure, Al Gore's film made a fair amount of money (although he claims to have donated it all), but unlike the various Energy industry studies (which have an obvious incentive to deny man-made climate change), who exactly do you think has the incentive to give massive amounts of cash to studies which conclude that man-made climate change is occurring?
The National Institute of Displaced Polar Bears?
"So then "to intervene introduces moral repercussions" is the only universal moral law?"
No, as I keep saying there is no universal moral law. You can base your actions on a perceived 'rightness' or whatever, it doesn't really make a difference at the end of the day.
It's news like this which makes me glad I don't live in the USA!
You are free to have an opinion on whatever you see, wherever you see it. But to intervene, in any way or form introduces moral repercussions. The whole point of my original post though was that there is no "universal moral code", there is only personal and society specific morals (and even those change dramatically with time).
You would be applying your own morals on the situation to "change" things, to say you are making things "better" is incorrect. They might be better in your opinion but that doesn't mean they are universally "better", such a statement is impossible unless you are omniscient, which is itself impossible (ignoring wacky religious views - which don't even make sense - of course).
Interesting post.
I do live in Europe and love the freedoms and morals enjoyed by its citizens. But I don't for one minute kid myself to believe that they from some sort of block of "universal" morals that everyone should "discover". To presume such would itself be "immoral" by the moral standards expressed in that post.
Firstly: those "rules" are so vague that they are virtually meaningless
Second: One could come up with countless examples of those "laws" contradicting each other (e.g. what if your 'job' is that of a thief?, the institutional theft from and murdering of the Jews was permitted by Nazi law, most still consider those acts immoral)
Third: The entire assertion is simply false. Some societies don't view "not doing your job" as immoral, some societies deem lying as exceptable (e.g. white lies)
You have just taken a bunch of Christian / Western ethical rules and pretended that they are 1) universal and 2) concrete, when in fact they are neither.
This statement is so naive it's funny!
Every Society has always claimed to be the "most humane". Concepts like "humanity" and "morals" are extremely subjective terms that are constantly redefined based on the the society in question's ethical standpoint of the day.
To many other societies, both past a present, the West is extremely inhumane and grossly immoral. The point is that there is no "universal ethics", it's all completely subjective.
Fortunately any decent peer-to-peer system has methods for controlling such threats.
The need for data to "change lanes" is an extremely common occurrence in peer-to-peer networks. Modern peer-to-peer systems generally handle the situation extremely well. The fact that your computer doesn't instantly crash with thousands of requests whenever you join a gnutella network shows that the concept is well handled.
The German system described in TFA seems designed to stop everyone instantly switching lanes, as one would expect.
I think there is a fundamental difference though in that for over a decade now Microsoft has been able to convince people all around the world to part with hundreds of dollars, pounds, euros, yen and whatever else for their core products (Windows and Office), and many of their other products do also make a profit. Google has yet to launch a single application that can do this.
They do make a fair amount of money through their ad system but they are yet to produce anything else which isn't running at a loss. Besides, most stock-market analysts will agree that unless Google can pull something out of their hat in the next few years, their valuation is simply insane.