In fact the ancient Jews were once a Matriarchal society, and that is up until the founding of the Judaism we all now know and love, that fixed than whole "Women are people" problem" right up. Here's a laugh. The work by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford Anthropologist, on stress and societies dominated by alpha males is absolutely fascinating. In fact what he discovered using baboons (who by the way made superb surrogates for human male dominated societies) was that patriarchal societies are marked by naked aggression, bullying, posturing, violence, coercion, politics and high levels of stress for all but the alpha males. Whereas matriarchal societies tend to be happy, collaborative, consensus based, and in general lovely places for all the members of the troop. Go figure. Matriarchal societies don't fare well, because they don't tend to war. They prefer to negotiate and come to mutually beneficial agreements, and what fun is that, you need to justify that military industrial complex... stupid women. Anyway, just an really interesting look into the monkey in man.
Look around. What do you see? Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Buddhism, and a wild mix of African religions that are strongly influenced by the other middle east religions. The vast majority of people on the planet live in violent patriarchal societies, because those are the ones fighting to rule the world. You can't poke a stick in a bunch of pissed off brown people without seeing the religion at the core. If you think the history of Europe or America is any better, think again. So. Patriarchy like Fascism is great for getting things done, but the quality of life it leaves behind is sort of sucky. Maybe we can learn something from the Baboons.
uh, yeah, as I last recall western religions, i.e. religions coming from Asia major or minor all sport a fair to middling amount of misogyny at their core, and in fact reduce women pretty much to live stock. So while Ugg may have had to tap dance mightily not to have Una toss his fuzzy butt into the volcano as a hors d'oeuvre to the fire god, men have been faring a wee bit better over all in last say what, 3,000 years? Patriarchal societies are pretty much the norm now, so if you want to morn for poor ol Ugg, be my guest, but let's keep our heads out of the fossil record where sexual abuse is being discussed.
How about I don't believe anything that is a big hot steaming pile of opinion... give me a basis to believe something, a fact or two, perhaps a report, or an expert in the field and that doesn't mean farmer John. I don't say the guy doesn't have friends who were treated unfairly. Not exactly a meaningful sample population. If there is an evil conniving bitch in town falsely accusing innocent boys of dirty deeds, by all means, slap her hard in a court of justice. Make her pay for her wanton criminal behavior. The whole reason such a bad lady exists, is because the crime she's crying about, is common place, and it generates strong emotions in a lot of people who have themselves been assaulted.
But please lets not compare the huckster to the rapist, having your body penetrated forcefully against your will is one of the worst things a person can experience, think of it as on a par with being stabbed. Only worse, because one of the most wonderful things in life has now been turned into the most horrible thing another person will ever do to you. Let put it in context for you so you can empathize. Some big bad person hog ties you and proceeds to place your manly bits on a large stump, then takes a rather large tenderizing mallet to your package. When he's done, every time you go to the bathroom, you'll relive the experience, and forget about sex, that's just out of the question. You don't know which is worse, the physical, emotional or psychological injury, but you're clear they're all competing for top spot. How do you cope, who do you talk to, where do you go for help? Welcome to the world of rape.
Show me yours, cuz I'm showing you mine... Here's a 2007 study on just rape by the National Department of Justice, and in particular the rapes that involve the use of incapacitation and rape drugs. You can't tell me that slipping a ruffy into a girls drink qualifies as foreplay or that what follows is consensual. Fact is, there is an epidemic of rape, and a lot of it is violent, involves incapacitation, and is undereported because clowns like you minimize the importance of dealing with this problem with the gravity it deserves and stigmatize the victims. Your position is irresponsible, and I'm sorry you know someone who was unfairly treated. That doesn't excuse the behavior or make it any less of a problem in our culture. You show me your numbers. mine say its one of the most common bad things that happens to women in this society. Please, change my mind, show me that its all just a mistake, and women are conniving bitches out to lead poor men to the slaughter. Yeah, I didn't think so.
Men get raped more than what? Sheep? By who? Other men of course. Since 90% or more of those men are straight, and rape is not a problem for them as they are clearly demonstrating while incarcerated, why would you think for a moment those very same men wouldn't also take the sex they want on WOMEN who they prefer to men when they are out of prison? One in three women will be raped in their lifetime. Even Catholic alter boys don't have to endure those kind of odds. Guys, please get a clue, even a small one, sex is not a right (unless its with yourself in a private place), and taking sex with a nonconsensual partner is by definition rape. That includes date rape, raping a spouse, if she says no, no means no.
Sadly there are women that use sex as a weapon, and that is dastardly, because the male sex drive is a big handle on the male psyche (and excuse the unintended pun), but attacking a man there is simply a low blow. Unsportsman life conduct. Someone caught doing this should receive serious punitive damages to show others, this is no way to get ahead (again no pun intended.) However, when you can show me that there is an epidemic of this behavior resulting in one in three men being abuse this way in their lifetimes, we'll talk about tit for tat (again sorry.)
I know its easy to make this a humorous subject, and that's sad, because its deadly serious. A lot of rapist kill their victims hoping to avoid prosecution. A man was just recently found on a 1987 rape, murder in northern California because of the state's expanding DNA library. We need to be teaching our young men that this is a zero tolerance behavior, and that anyone who thinks that women are meat to be used, is an idiot and a dangerous sociopath.
I'm not sure I agree with you, but I not at all sure I can disagree either. Human beings are Machiavellian bastards. Selfish, narcissistic, greedy, self serving pigs. We are also loving, compassionate, giving and selfless. We have in us, each of us (save the sick ones), the capacity to forgive, accept, embrace and empower unconditionally. The thing is, you can't do that with you at your own center. Its like driving a car looking at the rear view mirror pointed at yourself. You'll be able to admire your pretty eyes as you crash into things and run others over.
The only true compasses exist outside of ourselves and demand that we be paying attention to something greater than ourselves. That could be god. It could be humanity. It could be life for the sake living. You just have to give yourself wholly to something that gives your life meaning and purpose. Those who don't, become as as Shaw described in "Man and Superman" "...Small clods of ailments and grievances complaining that life won't devote itself to their needs..."
We've built an entire culture on vanity, consumption, and vapid self obsession. Perhaps its time now to build a new society on contribution, love and advancement. I don't mean religion per se. I'm not interested in Dogma or Orthodoxies, these become just one more way for people to become justified and self righteous. I'm taking about educating our children to appreciate their greatness and lead them to aspire to that greatness. I'm talking about showing people that contribution is the defining act that gives us all personal meaning. I'm talking about bringing courage to the fear, and tearing down the self imposed walls between people. I realize this is just wool gathering. But its more than that too. Its why we're angry when a young man is used so poorly by a large organization. He isn't disposable. We are not disposable. Those in power, need to know we will not be disposed of, and that in attempting to do so, it is their own life that is made cheap.
Friend, this isn't the movies... its not CGI, this isn't a bunch of mannequins being tossed off of high buildings. This is human trash raping babies. Religious whack jobs dismembering and disemboweling "infidels", this is people blowing up small cute furry critters that others would call pets. If you can watch a steady diet of that for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year and say "Eh, bad people doing bad things, Eh..." Then I might I suggest a job in politics or perhaps marketing, because you have no soul.
Everything is rooted in meaning. A person with a powerful capacity to invent personal context might be able to sustain a healthy personality for quite a while. They would need to know that human depravity has no bottom, and that what they are doing is a service to take said depravity out of the mainstream. Next, they would need to have a strong spiritual life, seeing the flesh as only meat, a vessel for the human soul, would reduce the impact of people doing terrible things to meat. Finally, they would have to have a rich and diverse personal life that fulfilled and empowered them outside of managing digital toxic waste. Without a profoundly rich personal life, they nastiness would be quickly take its toll. Think of this as a psychic decathlon. Certainly not for a timid soul.
Exposing an employee to this kind of working condition without prior consent and lengthy explanation as to the possible impact I think would qualify as an OSHA violation. Google might need to consider legal ramifications. Contrary to the corporate norm, people are not disposable,
Forget the regular gun. A dart gun loaded we Succinylcholine. A powerful paralytic. Roid ranger goes down hard, no dead bodies, no fighting, no risk to bystanders or neighbors. Just bag and tag. You want to keep him breathing (he can't breath without help) and keep him alive until the welcome wagon arrives. Nonlethal, completely effective, and after a few hours, leaves no trace in the blood stream. The perfect asshole management technology. Everyone should have one.
Actually its horizontal gene transfer that migrates the chunks of DNA, but its the fact that the DNA is not a stable part of the critters genome that causes all kinds of mischief. Things naturally reorganize, get expressed, the genome is a fractal ball and it opens and close entire sections to do its job. These introduced components are kludges. They mess with the normal function and expression of the organisms genome, and these genes can easily escape the housing genome and get expressed in procaryotic organisms that live in the plant or animal (remember that way over 90% of the cells in your body are not cells that contain your human inheritance.) So genes you certainly don't want getting into the wild like antibiotic markers and genes that express for resistance to things like roundup spread all over the place. The scary part is that it would be very easy to introduce a weapon, so easy, a single person with a little money and some patience, could make something truly viscous. All I've ever said is that we need to deal with this technology in particular with restraint, our hubris could very easily come back to bite us hard.
As for a vision of what's possible for being human, until we stop letting our past define us, and begin inventing future worth living into, until we stand for what we know to be just and worthwhile, and hold others (and ourselves) to account for their/our actions, we will continue to soil our diapers, make the world a cesspool, and waste the future clubbing one another insensible. I'd love to see the species wake up, I'm not certain what it would take to do it.
The problem is that there really are blood diamonds, and platinum in South Africa being mined under inhumane conditions, and products all over the world that utilize what amounts to slave labor, child labor, and a panoply of moral indignations that no thoughtful person should have to be any party to. People who work especially hard to ensure that their products are morally and ethically upstanding have every right to say "Hey, I go to extra measures to make certain I'm responsible for my workers, the environment and/or the well being of my customers."
Companies who are not certain they can make these claims should look at whether or not they are willing to shoulder the extra cost of making their products consistent with these claims, or if they would simply rather sell at a lower price. There are plenty of consumers out there who will put low cost ahead of socially responsible entrepreneurship.
There are also a number of bad players who claim the moral high ground and upon inspection are found to be nothing of the sort. These folks are simply greedy, liars and cheats and need to be stood on high places and exposed for the liars they are. Not that lying and advertising don't now go hand in hand, but there are lies and then there are lies. There are also industries who are rife with dishonesty, misleading claims and nonstandard standards that have been pulled from somebodies rectum. It could honestly be said anything containing carbon is organic by at least one definition of the word. A veterinary doctor made an inedible glop from barbershop clippings, mineral oil, and wood shavings. The hair was virtually pure protein, the oil a fat, and the wood shavings carbohydrate. He made a label exclaiming the bulk amounts of each dietary item, and it looked just like you were buying a top brand of dogfood, at least by the label. The fact that all those constituents were locked up in a form that was completely indigestible and would probably kill your pet didn't change the fact that the label was in fact accurate, and that if you didn't know which questions to ask you might be feeding your pet poison. Same goes for people. You are far better off getting to know where and from whom you food comes, than paying any heed to a label. What is it that MacBeth said? "I pull in resolution, and begin to doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth..." better yet... Caveate Emptor.
I'm sorry, but if it can be argued that science is a systematic methodology for identifying likely truth, and distinguish it from certain untruth. Enforced ignorance might or might not be anti-science but it would certainly be impossible to practice any kind of meaningful science in the absence of verifiable facts.
Virtually everything you said was square on the money, and I for the most part concur. Especially about the part that people should develop the personal responsibility gene and take the trouble to make informed choices for themselves rather than bouncing from one knee-jerk to the next. That said, my biggest concern is that the "Science" employed in GM crops is being applied in a sloppy fashion, the genetic content is finding its way into the wild without the slightest appreciation for what that means to native species or even animal life for that matter. You mention environmental value, the environment is a big place. The antibiotic gene tags used in GM crops may well exacerbate existing problems with bacterial immunity to antibiotics, and its crazy just throw those genes literally into the wind. There is good reason that we use safeguards in the lab, and we take no such safeguards in the field. We know that genes particularly plasmids jump species through viruses and bacteria, and that the pollen emitted by GM crops have already caused numerous wild species to take up the "Modified Genes". With so many unknowns, and with so great a potential for both environmental and social disaster, we should be putting profit behind social well being and making certain what we put in the fields won't come back to haunt us.
Have you bothered to inform yourself regarding what the real concerns and controversies regarding GM crops are? Not just the sensational crap, but the hard line scientific considerations about performing huge genetic experiments on our entire civilization, in the open wind, blowing all over the world, where if gawd forbid we discover we've made a terrible mistake, and something profoundly egregious makes it to the field, we will have less than a popcorn fart in a hurricane's chance of preventing the unthinkable. Normally, such tinkering is done under the strictest of biological safeguard, precisely because we don't know what the greater implications for such tinkering are, but here's a group who've infiltrated our government, blocked the testing necessary to prevent disaster, and are now positioned to spread whatever they create across the globe. I tell you, I honestly hope down to the bottom of my very being that the people or person behind this insanity doesn't have some twisted idea they can jump start the second coming of Christ by inventing an unstoppable global plague, because there is literally nothing stopping him/them. Oh, and if you think the whole jump starting Armageddon thing is fanciful, you need to read about what a significant number of American Christians believe regarding the second coming... it'd make you hinny pucker. GM crops could make a significant contribution to the quality of human life, we just need to make certain that the folks who wield it aren't more interested in self aggrandizement and willing to gamble on the well being of society to reach their goals.
Its not the specific trait that is the problem. Its the fact that speciation makes it very hard to get at the genetic material of a species, so the only way to get that trait into a plant is to use bacteria or viruses to push the DNA in and there are a number of other protocols at work that include such things as using antibiotic genes as tagging markers. All of this has serious real world implications from potentially causing antibiotic resistance to spread in the wild, to unintentionally passing any number of genes into the environment. When you have thousands of million of different genes floating around that are associated with infectious vectors, their impact is highly unpredictable and may result in real harm being done to a wide variety of species including human beings. It is an incredibly bad genetic experiments literally tossed into the wind, and nobody has the vaguest idea what the long term impacts will be. Selective breeding is infinitely more benign, and relies on stable genetic crossings. You can't begin to compare these two processes and the difference in their potential danger. You can't cross a tomato and a trout... you can cross a corn and a bacteria. You can only snip DNA out of one and insert in the other, and maybe the DNA hangs around, and more than likely it doesn't. This isn't playing Gawd, its playing genetic Russian Roulette.
I can't tell if that is Zen Aphorism or Orwellian DoubleThink? Picking your pocket is just the first thing the invisible hand has in mind. It'll finish by picking you clean.
I completely agree, once Henry Ford standardized what a car was for Americans, anybody could and did drive and here we are now. There are still the car geeks, squeezing revs out of supercharged, blueprinted engines, and then as you say, there are the econoboxes populating the highways and byways of our nation. The thing about computers however, is that it would be great to take computers to a higher level than simple engineered obsolescence in the name of making another buck. Building modular components that are compatible through 2 or 3 generations would allow a person to upgrade just the display or just the storage or just the ROM drive as technology improved, reducing the waste and improving the user experience on a continuous basis. Components could be plug and play. Every second or third upgrade it would be time to purchase an inexpensive frame that holds all the components, and brings new features to the device, enhanced cooling, more storage space, new display and associated hardware.
Our disposable society is part of our problem and coming up with ways to get people to upgrade, while we enhance is one solution.
The point though in the lease is that you aren't "Buying the car, you're buying the driving..." therefore you get to have that BMW experience for less than the price of purchasing the BMW outright. Here you pay the whole freight, you own the box, and as you get it home, it becomes obsolete and there's not a damn thing you can do to make it better. Its all the worst parts of buying and leasing. Therefore sucky by design. I reassert, this is only a viable product for a person with deep pockets who doesn't want to be bothered with the problems of keeping their machine current or maintain the hardware. When you put that price and the word disposable in the same sentence, you make me think of Banker's Children and their fashion accessory computer. This isn't a meaningful product trend.
I'm sorry if someone came out with a $25,000 disposable car, that needed no service, was virtually indestructible for 5 years and then had to be turned in for the next $25,000 disposable car, I'm guessing most folks would tell Detroit to stick it where the sun don't shine. Certainly there would be a few who had the money and if it was a great driving experience, with super tires that last the life of the car, a super electric motor, and sealed systems so there was simply no need for maintenance, those few who wanted to drive without concern might enjoy it. The rest of us want to sell it when we're done, many want the value of a used car. A disposable car is great for the dealer and the wealthy guy who can afford a $25,000 expense every 5 years.
A computer is not a phone. Trying to make it into one, because you like the phone model (and it pays better, and you lock your customer into your sandbox better) isn't just creepy, its a dis-service to your customer. Of course you can rationalize that we'll better care of you than anybody else, but that just smacks of a clingy lover whose jealousy and possessiveness is bound to kill the relationship. Stop trying to lock down your customer and just take good care of them instead. Sure, offer a closed solution as a premium product for those who want no concerns whatsoever. But leave the open box for the rest of us who will do with computers what we please, and certainly not what you had planned for.
Friend, the problem is that what you say of government is precisely true of all human enterprises, corporations, religious organizations, even organized charities. People are greed, self obsessed, Machiavellian bastards. But we have the power to be responsible for our worst natures, we can even engineer our social systems to account for our baser instincts. You just need to make sure everyone understands what the game is and why its designed this way. Then cut the hand off the first monkey who screws with the coconuts as a public display. The wheels only came off the cart when we let power hungry ideologue hijack our government back in the 80s, its time to take it back.
You keep talking about government like there is some thing "Government". Its people. Just like corporations. Just like the folks who are being governed. You address government the same way you address any organization or institution. You give it a mandate. You empower it to fulfill its mandate. You limit it such that it can't do more than you allow it to do. You create zero sum constraints (like checks and balances) to ensure it can't just take what it wants, and you demand transparency and accountability. Of course that would mean that your society needs to be at least as responsible as the government body it creates... and aye, there's the rub.
I'm sorry but there are plenty of laws and regulations that are perfectly reasonable and acceptable in a civilized society. Traffic laws. Sanitation laws. Laws regarding acceptable handling and preparation of food and consumables. Laws designed to ensure that others can't rob you, defame you, abuse you or members of your family without facing prosecution. THERE ARE EVEN REGULATIONS LIMITING THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT... are you telling me you don't like those regulations? The Bill of Rights are regulations on the Government. Which of those would you repeal? I'm not a big fan of the government as it now exists, but I can honestly say, the rule of law, and the need to regulate a society are fundamental to its orderly operation. Rules are only bad when PEOPLE use them to inflict their hubris on others. Here as always, the problem isn't the rule, but the person who would use it to do harm.
I'm sorry but this is just a pile of bat guano... We have traffic regulations so we don't all kill each other when we leave our garages in the morning. There is nothing draconian about asking people not to drive through red lights at 200 MPH, and its for the good of all when they restrict the freedom to drive of the idiot who doesn't obey that rule. There are thousands of rules we've created as a society to distinguish ourselves from cave dweller and roving bands of hunter gatherers. We in fact call these rules the foundations of CIVILIZATION. We need regulation, because left to my desires alone, I may decide I want that space your body is occupying, and without rules to say, NO I CAN'T HAVE THAT PARTICULAR SPACE, innocent people may end up getting killed in the cross fire.
Governments are necessary evils. Our founding fathers realized that and created checks and balances to keep it (the government) from getting out of hand. Sadly, we stopped telling our children that they are responsible for themselves and their society, so they let the government grow to take care of them, and now its taken care of them so well, they are almost fresh out of liberty. That's not a failure of government. That's an indictment of our society. The erosion of personal integrity and personal accountability. A failure of our institutions of education. We've stopped teaching ethics, philosophy and social responsibility and now we have a society devoid of these qualities. The government simply reflects the rest of society. It was George Carlin who said "I don't do political jokes... where do you think you get greedy, stupid, corrupt politicians from? A rift in the space time continuum? From a parallel dimension? No, you get stupid, lazy, corrupt politicians from a society of stupid, lazy, corrupt people. Therefore I do no political jokes.
We have a tremendous body of law to protect the stupid from themselves... ground fault wiring regulations so people can use their blow dryers in the shower... jay walking laws to prevent human speed bumps... we do everything but dress our children in NERF these days... The government isn't the problem and it hasn't been for a long time. The problem is reining in the stupid. I assert the societal stupidity is a threat to freedom orders of magnitude greater than the one you speak of, and that what you describe is a symptom, not a cause.
Forgive me, but when every major organization of network engineers and computer scientists say "Net Neutrality is a critical issue" I tend to go with them, and not the guy with a political axe to grind. The whole point is not that ISPs need to manage their network, the point is that the large corporations want the unbridled freedom to fleece the sheep. Provide high performance services to the high rollers and stick the rest of society with throttled, metered, watered down access. Streaming... hahahaha... yeah right... maybe a yellow stream. Push you right back to 57K, unless you're willing to pay for those big fat pipes, and oh baby, you'll pay. Go look out your window. Check out the gas prices. Check around the block. Check out 10 different stations from different gas companies. What do you notice. How's that competition working for you? You guys keep spouting this stuff, and its like your talking in your sleep. ARE YOU UNAWARE OF WHAT'S HAPPENING AROUND YOU? Your ideas just aren't washing. Until you make the market free, this is the only way to preserve anything resembling freedom.
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In fact the ancient Jews were once a Matriarchal society, and that is up until the founding of the Judaism we all now know and love, that fixed than whole "Women are people" problem" right up. Here's a laugh. The work by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford Anthropologist, on stress and societies dominated by alpha males is absolutely fascinating. In fact what he discovered using baboons (who by the way made superb surrogates for human male dominated societies) was that patriarchal societies are marked by naked aggression, bullying, posturing, violence, coercion, politics and high levels of stress for all but the alpha males. Whereas matriarchal societies tend to be happy, collaborative, consensus based, and in general lovely places for all the members of the troop. Go figure. Matriarchal societies don't fare well, because they don't tend to war. They prefer to negotiate and come to mutually beneficial agreements, and what fun is that, you need to justify that military industrial complex... stupid women. Anyway, just an really interesting look into the monkey in man.
Look around. What do you see? Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Buddhism, and a wild mix of African religions that are strongly influenced by the other middle east religions. The vast majority of people on the planet live in violent patriarchal societies, because those are the ones fighting to rule the world. You can't poke a stick in a bunch of pissed off brown people without seeing the religion at the core. If you think the history of Europe or America is any better, think again. So. Patriarchy like Fascism is great for getting things done, but the quality of life it leaves behind is sort of sucky. Maybe we can learn something from the Baboons.
uh, yeah, as I last recall western religions, i.e. religions coming from Asia major or minor all sport a fair to middling amount of misogyny at their core, and in fact reduce women pretty much to live stock. So while Ugg may have had to tap dance mightily not to have Una toss his fuzzy butt into the volcano as a hors d'oeuvre to the fire god, men have been faring a wee bit better over all in last say what, 3,000 years? Patriarchal societies are pretty much the norm now, so if you want to morn for poor ol Ugg, be my guest, but let's keep our heads out of the fossil record where sexual abuse is being discussed.
How about I don't believe anything that is a big hot steaming pile of opinion... give me a basis to believe something, a fact or two, perhaps a report, or an expert in the field and that doesn't mean farmer John. I don't say the guy doesn't have friends who were treated unfairly. Not exactly a meaningful sample population. If there is an evil conniving bitch in town falsely accusing innocent boys of dirty deeds, by all means, slap her hard in a court of justice. Make her pay for her wanton criminal behavior. The whole reason such a bad lady exists, is because the crime she's crying about, is common place, and it generates strong emotions in a lot of people who have themselves been assaulted.
But please lets not compare the huckster to the rapist, having your body penetrated forcefully against your will is one of the worst things a person can experience, think of it as on a par with being stabbed. Only worse, because one of the most wonderful things in life has now been turned into the most horrible thing another person will ever do to you. Let put it in context for you so you can empathize. Some big bad person hog ties you and proceeds to place your manly bits on a large stump, then takes a rather large tenderizing mallet to your package. When he's done, every time you go to the bathroom, you'll relive the experience, and forget about sex, that's just out of the question. You don't know which is worse, the physical, emotional or psychological injury, but you're clear they're all competing for top spot. How do you cope, who do you talk to, where do you go for help? Welcome to the world of rape.
Show me yours, cuz I'm showing you mine... Here's a 2007 study on just rape by the National Department of Justice, and in particular the rapes that involve the use of incapacitation and rape drugs. You can't tell me that slipping a ruffy into a girls drink qualifies as foreplay or that what follows is consensual. Fact is, there is an epidemic of rape, and a lot of it is violent, involves incapacitation, and is undereported because clowns like you minimize the importance of dealing with this problem with the gravity it deserves and stigmatize the victims. Your position is irresponsible, and I'm sorry you know someone who was unfairly treated. That doesn't excuse the behavior or make it any less of a problem in our culture. You show me your numbers. mine say its one of the most common bad things that happens to women in this society. Please, change my mind, show me that its all just a mistake, and women are conniving bitches out to lead poor men to the slaughter. Yeah, I didn't think so.
Men get raped more than what? Sheep? By who? Other men of course. Since 90% or more of those men are straight, and rape is not a problem for them as they are clearly demonstrating while incarcerated, why would you think for a moment those very same men wouldn't also take the sex they want on WOMEN who they prefer to men when they are out of prison? One in three women will be raped in their lifetime. Even Catholic alter boys don't have to endure those kind of odds. Guys, please get a clue, even a small one, sex is not a right (unless its with yourself in a private place), and taking sex with a nonconsensual partner is by definition rape. That includes date rape, raping a spouse, if she says no, no means no.
Sadly there are women that use sex as a weapon, and that is dastardly, because the male sex drive is a big handle on the male psyche (and excuse the unintended pun), but attacking a man there is simply a low blow. Unsportsman life conduct. Someone caught doing this should receive serious punitive damages to show others, this is no way to get ahead (again no pun intended.) However, when you can show me that there is an epidemic of this behavior resulting in one in three men being abuse this way in their lifetimes, we'll talk about tit for tat (again sorry.)
I know its easy to make this a humorous subject, and that's sad, because its deadly serious. A lot of rapist kill their victims hoping to avoid prosecution. A man was just recently found on a 1987 rape, murder in northern California because of the state's expanding DNA library. We need to be teaching our young men that this is a zero tolerance behavior, and that anyone who thinks that women are meat to be used, is an idiot and a dangerous sociopath.
I'm not sure I agree with you, but I not at all sure I can disagree either. Human beings are Machiavellian bastards. Selfish, narcissistic, greedy, self serving pigs. We are also loving, compassionate, giving and selfless. We have in us, each of us (save the sick ones), the capacity to forgive, accept, embrace and empower unconditionally. The thing is, you can't do that with you at your own center. Its like driving a car looking at the rear view mirror pointed at yourself. You'll be able to admire your pretty eyes as you crash into things and run others over.
The only true compasses exist outside of ourselves and demand that we be paying attention to something greater than ourselves. That could be god. It could be humanity. It could be life for the sake living. You just have to give yourself wholly to something that gives your life meaning and purpose. Those who don't, become as as Shaw described in "Man and Superman" "...Small clods of ailments and grievances complaining that life won't devote itself to their needs..."
We've built an entire culture on vanity, consumption, and vapid self obsession. Perhaps its time now to build a new society on contribution, love and advancement. I don't mean religion per se. I'm not interested in Dogma or Orthodoxies, these become just one more way for people to become justified and self righteous. I'm taking about educating our children to appreciate their greatness and lead them to aspire to that greatness. I'm talking about showing people that contribution is the defining act that gives us all personal meaning. I'm talking about bringing courage to the fear, and tearing down the self imposed walls between people. I realize this is just wool gathering. But its more than that too. Its why we're angry when a young man is used so poorly by a large organization. He isn't disposable. We are not disposable. Those in power, need to know we will not be disposed of, and that in attempting to do so, it is their own life that is made cheap.
Friend, this isn't the movies... its not CGI, this isn't a bunch of mannequins being tossed off of high buildings. This is human trash raping babies. Religious whack jobs dismembering and disemboweling "infidels", this is people blowing up small cute furry critters that others would call pets. If you can watch a steady diet of that for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year and say "Eh, bad people doing bad things, Eh..." Then I might I suggest a job in politics or perhaps marketing, because you have no soul.
Everything is rooted in meaning. A person with a powerful capacity to invent personal context might be able to sustain a healthy personality for quite a while. They would need to know that human depravity has no bottom, and that what they are doing is a service to take said depravity out of the mainstream. Next, they would need to have a strong spiritual life, seeing the flesh as only meat, a vessel for the human soul, would reduce the impact of people doing terrible things to meat. Finally, they would have to have a rich and diverse personal life that fulfilled and empowered them outside of managing digital toxic waste. Without a profoundly rich personal life, they nastiness would be quickly take its toll. Think of this as a psychic decathlon. Certainly not for a timid soul.
Exposing an employee to this kind of working condition without prior consent and lengthy explanation as to the possible impact I think would qualify as an OSHA violation. Google might need to consider legal ramifications. Contrary to the corporate norm, people are not disposable,
Forget the regular gun. A dart gun loaded we Succinylcholine. A powerful paralytic. Roid ranger goes down hard, no dead bodies, no fighting, no risk to bystanders or neighbors. Just bag and tag. You want to keep him breathing (he can't breath without help) and keep him alive until the welcome wagon arrives. Nonlethal, completely effective, and after a few hours, leaves no trace in the blood stream. The perfect asshole management technology. Everyone should have one.
Newt Gingrich in the buff in the Sea of Galilee... I think I need that mental picture electro shocked out of my head... thanks for that!
Actually its horizontal gene transfer that migrates the chunks of DNA, but its the fact that the DNA is not a stable part of the critters genome that causes all kinds of mischief. Things naturally reorganize, get expressed, the genome is a fractal ball and it opens and close entire sections to do its job. These introduced components are kludges. They mess with the normal function and expression of the organisms genome, and these genes can easily escape the housing genome and get expressed in procaryotic organisms that live in the plant or animal (remember that way over 90% of the cells in your body are not cells that contain your human inheritance.) So genes you certainly don't want getting into the wild like antibiotic markers and genes that express for resistance to things like roundup spread all over the place. The scary part is that it would be very easy to introduce a weapon, so easy, a single person with a little money and some patience, could make something truly viscous. All I've ever said is that we need to deal with this technology in particular with restraint, our hubris could very easily come back to bite us hard.
As for a vision of what's possible for being human, until we stop letting our past define us, and begin inventing future worth living into, until we stand for what we know to be just and worthwhile, and hold others (and ourselves) to account for their/our actions, we will continue to soil our diapers, make the world a cesspool, and waste the future clubbing one another insensible. I'd love to see the species wake up, I'm not certain what it would take to do it.
The problem is that there really are blood diamonds, and platinum in South Africa being mined under inhumane conditions, and products all over the world that utilize what amounts to slave labor, child labor, and a panoply of moral indignations that no thoughtful person should have to be any party to. People who work especially hard to ensure that their products are morally and ethically upstanding have every right to say "Hey, I go to extra measures to make certain I'm responsible for my workers, the environment and/or the well being of my customers."
Companies who are not certain they can make these claims should look at whether or not they are willing to shoulder the extra cost of making their products consistent with these claims, or if they would simply rather sell at a lower price. There are plenty of consumers out there who will put low cost ahead of socially responsible entrepreneurship.
There are also a number of bad players who claim the moral high ground and upon inspection are found to be nothing of the sort. These folks are simply greedy, liars and cheats and need to be stood on high places and exposed for the liars they are. Not that lying and advertising don't now go hand in hand, but there are lies and then there are lies. There are also industries who are rife with dishonesty, misleading claims and nonstandard standards that have been pulled from somebodies rectum. It could honestly be said anything containing carbon is organic by at least one definition of the word. A veterinary doctor made an inedible glop from barbershop clippings, mineral oil, and wood shavings. The hair was virtually pure protein, the oil a fat, and the wood shavings carbohydrate. He made a label exclaiming the bulk amounts of each dietary item, and it looked just like you were buying a top brand of dogfood, at least by the label. The fact that all those constituents were locked up in a form that was completely indigestible and would probably kill your pet didn't change the fact that the label was in fact accurate, and that if you didn't know which questions to ask you might be feeding your pet poison. Same goes for people. You are far better off getting to know where and from whom you food comes, than paying any heed to a label. What is it that MacBeth said? "I pull in resolution, and begin to doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth..." better yet... Caveate Emptor.
I'm sorry, but if it can be argued that science is a systematic methodology for identifying likely truth, and distinguish it from certain untruth. Enforced ignorance might or might not be anti-science but it would certainly be impossible to practice any kind of meaningful science in the absence of verifiable facts.
Virtually everything you said was square on the money, and I for the most part concur. Especially about the part that people should develop the personal responsibility gene and take the trouble to make informed choices for themselves rather than bouncing from one knee-jerk to the next. That said, my biggest concern is that the "Science" employed in GM crops is being applied in a sloppy fashion, the genetic content is finding its way into the wild without the slightest appreciation for what that means to native species or even animal life for that matter. You mention environmental value, the environment is a big place. The antibiotic gene tags used in GM crops may well exacerbate existing problems with bacterial immunity to antibiotics, and its crazy just throw those genes literally into the wind. There is good reason that we use safeguards in the lab, and we take no such safeguards in the field. We know that genes particularly plasmids jump species through viruses and bacteria, and that the pollen emitted by GM crops have already caused numerous wild species to take up the "Modified Genes". With so many unknowns, and with so great a potential for both environmental and social disaster, we should be putting profit behind social well being and making certain what we put in the fields won't come back to haunt us.
Have you bothered to inform yourself regarding what the real concerns and controversies regarding GM crops are? Not just the sensational crap, but the hard line scientific considerations about performing huge genetic experiments on our entire civilization, in the open wind, blowing all over the world, where if gawd forbid we discover we've made a terrible mistake, and something profoundly egregious makes it to the field, we will have less than a popcorn fart in a hurricane's chance of preventing the unthinkable. Normally, such tinkering is done under the strictest of biological safeguard, precisely because we don't know what the greater implications for such tinkering are, but here's a group who've infiltrated our government, blocked the testing necessary to prevent disaster, and are now positioned to spread whatever they create across the globe. I tell you, I honestly hope down to the bottom of my very being that the people or person behind this insanity doesn't have some twisted idea they can jump start the second coming of Christ by inventing an unstoppable global plague, because there is literally nothing stopping him/them. Oh, and if you think the whole jump starting Armageddon thing is fanciful, you need to read about what a significant number of American Christians believe regarding the second coming... it'd make you hinny pucker. GM crops could make a significant contribution to the quality of human life, we just need to make certain that the folks who wield it aren't more interested in self aggrandizement and willing to gamble on the well being of society to reach their goals.
Its not the specific trait that is the problem. Its the fact that speciation makes it very hard to get at the genetic material of a species, so the only way to get that trait into a plant is to use bacteria or viruses to push the DNA in and there are a number of other protocols at work that include such things as using antibiotic genes as tagging markers. All of this has serious real world implications from potentially causing antibiotic resistance to spread in the wild, to unintentionally passing any number of genes into the environment. When you have thousands of million of different genes floating around that are associated with infectious vectors, their impact is highly unpredictable and may result in real harm being done to a wide variety of species including human beings. It is an incredibly bad genetic experiments literally tossed into the wind, and nobody has the vaguest idea what the long term impacts will be. Selective breeding is infinitely more benign, and relies on stable genetic crossings. You can't begin to compare these two processes and the difference in their potential danger. You can't cross a tomato and a trout... you can cross a corn and a bacteria. You can only snip DNA out of one and insert in the other, and maybe the DNA hangs around, and more than likely it doesn't. This isn't playing Gawd, its playing genetic Russian Roulette.
I can't tell if that is Zen Aphorism or Orwellian DoubleThink? Picking your pocket is just the first thing the invisible hand has in mind. It'll finish by picking you clean.
I completely agree, once Henry Ford standardized what a car was for Americans, anybody could and did drive and here we are now. There are still the car geeks, squeezing revs out of supercharged, blueprinted engines, and then as you say, there are the econoboxes populating the highways and byways of our nation. The thing about computers however, is that it would be great to take computers to a higher level than simple engineered obsolescence in the name of making another buck. Building modular components that are compatible through 2 or 3 generations would allow a person to upgrade just the display or just the storage or just the ROM drive as technology improved, reducing the waste and improving the user experience on a continuous basis. Components could be plug and play. Every second or third upgrade it would be time to purchase an inexpensive frame that holds all the components, and brings new features to the device, enhanced cooling, more storage space, new display and associated hardware.
Our disposable society is part of our problem and coming up with ways to get people to upgrade, while we enhance is one solution.
The point though in the lease is that you aren't "Buying the car, you're buying the driving..." therefore you get to have that BMW experience for less than the price of purchasing the BMW outright. Here you pay the whole freight, you own the box, and as you get it home, it becomes obsolete and there's not a damn thing you can do to make it better. Its all the worst parts of buying and leasing. Therefore sucky by design. I reassert, this is only a viable product for a person with deep pockets who doesn't want to be bothered with the problems of keeping their machine current or maintain the hardware. When you put that price and the word disposable in the same sentence, you make me think of Banker's Children and their fashion accessory computer. This isn't a meaningful product trend.
I'm sorry if someone came out with a $25,000 disposable car, that needed no service, was virtually indestructible for 5 years and then had to be turned in for the next $25,000 disposable car, I'm guessing most folks would tell Detroit to stick it where the sun don't shine. Certainly there would be a few who had the money and if it was a great driving experience, with super tires that last the life of the car, a super electric motor, and sealed systems so there was simply no need for maintenance, those few who wanted to drive without concern might enjoy it. The rest of us want to sell it when we're done, many want the value of a used car. A disposable car is great for the dealer and the wealthy guy who can afford a $25,000 expense every 5 years.
A computer is not a phone. Trying to make it into one, because you like the phone model (and it pays better, and you lock your customer into your sandbox better) isn't just creepy, its a dis-service to your customer. Of course you can rationalize that we'll better care of you than anybody else, but that just smacks of a clingy lover whose jealousy and possessiveness is bound to kill the relationship. Stop trying to lock down your customer and just take good care of them instead. Sure, offer a closed solution as a premium product for those who want no concerns whatsoever. But leave the open box for the rest of us who will do with computers what we please, and certainly not what you had planned for.
Friend, the problem is that what you say of government is precisely true of all human enterprises, corporations, religious organizations, even organized charities. People are greed, self obsessed, Machiavellian bastards. But we have the power to be responsible for our worst natures, we can even engineer our social systems to account for our baser instincts. You just need to make sure everyone understands what the game is and why its designed this way. Then cut the hand off the first monkey who screws with the coconuts as a public display. The wheels only came off the cart when we let power hungry ideologue hijack our government back in the 80s, its time to take it back.
You keep talking about government like there is some thing "Government". Its people. Just like corporations. Just like the folks who are being governed. You address government the same way you address any organization or institution. You give it a mandate. You empower it to fulfill its mandate. You limit it such that it can't do more than you allow it to do. You create zero sum constraints (like checks and balances) to ensure it can't just take what it wants, and you demand transparency and accountability. Of course that would mean that your society needs to be at least as responsible as the government body it creates... and aye, there's the rub.
I'm sorry but there are plenty of laws and regulations that are perfectly reasonable and acceptable in a civilized society. Traffic laws. Sanitation laws. Laws regarding acceptable handling and preparation of food and consumables. Laws designed to ensure that others can't rob you, defame you, abuse you or members of your family without facing prosecution. THERE ARE EVEN REGULATIONS LIMITING THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT... are you telling me you don't like those regulations? The Bill of Rights are regulations on the Government. Which of those would you repeal? I'm not a big fan of the government as it now exists, but I can honestly say, the rule of law, and the need to regulate a society are fundamental to its orderly operation. Rules are only bad when PEOPLE use them to inflict their hubris on others. Here as always, the problem isn't the rule, but the person who would use it to do harm.
I'm sorry but this is just a pile of bat guano... We have traffic regulations so we don't all kill each other when we leave our garages in the morning. There is nothing draconian about asking people not to drive through red lights at 200 MPH, and its for the good of all when they restrict the freedom to drive of the idiot who doesn't obey that rule. There are thousands of rules we've created as a society to distinguish ourselves from cave dweller and roving bands of hunter gatherers. We in fact call these rules the foundations of CIVILIZATION. We need regulation, because left to my desires alone, I may decide I want that space your body is occupying, and without rules to say, NO I CAN'T HAVE THAT PARTICULAR SPACE, innocent people may end up getting killed in the cross fire.
Governments are necessary evils. Our founding fathers realized that and created checks and balances to keep it (the government) from getting out of hand. Sadly, we stopped telling our children that they are responsible for themselves and their society, so they let the government grow to take care of them, and now its taken care of them so well, they are almost fresh out of liberty. That's not a failure of government. That's an indictment of our society. The erosion of personal integrity and personal accountability. A failure of our institutions of education. We've stopped teaching ethics, philosophy and social responsibility and now we have a society devoid of these qualities. The government simply reflects the rest of society. It was George Carlin who said "I don't do political jokes... where do you think you get greedy, stupid, corrupt politicians from? A rift in the space time continuum? From a parallel dimension? No, you get stupid, lazy, corrupt politicians from a society of stupid, lazy, corrupt people. Therefore I do no political jokes.
We have a tremendous body of law to protect the stupid from themselves... ground fault wiring regulations so people can use their blow dryers in the shower... jay walking laws to prevent human speed bumps... we do everything but dress our children in NERF these days... The government isn't the problem and it hasn't been for a long time. The problem is reining in the stupid. I assert the societal stupidity is a threat to freedom orders of magnitude greater than the one you speak of, and that what you describe is a symptom, not a cause.
Forgive me, but when every major organization of network engineers and computer scientists say "Net Neutrality is a critical issue" I tend to go with them, and not the guy with a political axe to grind. The whole point is not that ISPs need to manage their network, the point is that the large corporations want the unbridled freedom to fleece the sheep. Provide high performance services to the high rollers and stick the rest of society with throttled, metered, watered down access. Streaming... hahahaha... yeah right... maybe a yellow stream. Push you right back to 57K, unless you're willing to pay for those big fat pipes, and oh baby, you'll pay. Go look out your window. Check out the gas prices. Check around the block. Check out 10 different stations from different gas companies. What do you notice. How's that competition working for you? You guys keep spouting this stuff, and its like your talking in your sleep. ARE YOU UNAWARE OF WHAT'S HAPPENING AROUND YOU? Your ideas just aren't washing. Until you make the market free, this is the only way to preserve anything resembling freedom.