And the sheriff's office, and the FBI, and DHS, and ICE, and the mainstream media, and us...
Yep, us too. Every US citizen bears some responsibility. We should demand media coverage of these obvious civil rights violations, these people aren't violent anarchists, they are citizens protesting the government. We should demand a police force that upholds the law instead of subverting it. We should elect the leaders who will do the most to protect our civil rights.
We've been tolerating this kind of behavior since 9/11 out of fear. It's time to admit to ourselves that we overreacted to the events of 9/11 and allowed our government to trash our civil rights in the name of protecting us.
We let fascists take our country from us in the name of making a 'war on terror.'
Vote. Email or write your local, state and federal representatives. Email local and national news. Protest.
i'm going to try an analogy to maybe clear this up:
in a war, someone has to dig ditches for the latrines. it's vital that soldiers shit somewhere contained so as not to spread disease, etc. however, just b/c latrines are important doesn't mean you have your 3 star general out there maintaining them.
you want your best minds envisioning and planning strategy. You want them guiding the implementation of that strategy. sure, in a sense, every soldier in a war is a 'warfighter' just like every person in a business is part of 'sales'...but some soldiers dig latrine ditches, some are snipers, and some are planners and strategizers.
when someone says 'the CEO is a salesman' i understand it from one angle (everyone's a salesman/warfighter) but unfortunately, if you don't go any deeper than that, you end up with Jeffery B. Skillings or Carly Fiorino as your CEO. My point is, a CEO has a specific function, and when doing the nitty gritty of choosing who can fill that function, a business has to think beyond the PR/sales/marketing value and focus on a person's operational value.
That's also why I brought up McCain's VP pick. She's nothing more than a PR stunt (and a poorly conceived one at that). She is not capable from the operational perspective. Not in the slightest. Perception is not reality.
yeah, so did Enron. That's a ridiculous idea. A CEO is the highest executive who reports to (and is held accountable by) the board of directors. S/he is the highest decision maker and is responsible for envisioning and implementing the highest level strategy of the company.
I wonder how American big business has gotten so bad at what they do, then I read a comment like yours and understand.
Parent is a troll and makes a pointless argument (btw...make up your mind, is he over-qualified or under-qualified?)
Who wouldn't want someone in office who knew about how law works. That's what they do...they are lawmakers. Maybe that's why Repub's selected an air-headed pageant queen ditz for VP...easier for the puppetmasters to control.
For every evil, coke-headed, nihilistic, self-serving lawyer out there, there's a hard-working, fair-minded lawyer who's looking to 'stick it' to the man and all the other sell-out lawyers.
Who do you think argues in favor of cases you support that went to the supreme court? Was it construction workers? Programmers? Nope...
have you ever thought about, you know, interesting pictures and art and that kind of shit?
ffffound.com is a pretty interesting site with many pics and images of all types. Some really tech stuff...also some more hipster artsy stuff.
I find that having a thought provoking image on my desktop background prompts some creative thinking when I get to a dead end while i'm working...just sayin'
Fair enough...I just know what TFA said. Judging from other comments you are right on.
Someone below posted that the Ned. program is "just to get them ready for when they switch in 10 years" and makes it sound controversial and negative. If that's what they do, switch to OSS for basic office desktops in 10 years, then that's still far ahead of where the US is at all levels of gov't. Sure there may be a few forward-thinking municipalities, but...c'mon.
Also, 10 years isn't a ridiculous timeframe b/c (at least in the US...don't know Ned. tax law!) it takes at least 5 years for most purchases to depreciate for tax purposes. For items like desks, computers, etc. in an office, a business can't write the cost off all at once, they have to do it progressively according to tax law.
Each license bought allows for tech support from Microsoft. Is there any such tech support from open source developers? Usually not
If they went to FOSS, they could take the 25 million they spent on M$ licenses (in 08 alone!) and pay local Quebecois to provide support. In fact, that's their whole grounds for bringing the case to court.
From TFA: "Quebec's public administration refuses to even consider and evaluate these options...the regulation implies that public markets have to enhance the local economic development as well as the Quebec technologies....From February to June 2008...sales of proprietary software for more than 25 million dollars"
Sounds like good case to me. My parents actually worked in the kind of local government that would be using this software, and I'm here to tell you, the transition would go fine. The fact is, most of them barely bumble their way through no matter WHAT software they use (on their outdated machines). All they use is a word processor, email, and maybe a spreadsheet and simple database. Just the basics.
This from TFA actually kinda scared me...scared because I'm worried about how far the US is falling behind other countries when it comes to tech: "In the Netherlands, the public administration, one of the most modern in the world, has decided to forbid the use of proprietary software in the public sector."
Do you see how the definitions are properly applied, even if you don't agree that they provide a more accurate framework for discussion?
no. i really don't. honestly, you lost me, but it's good that you support using a two axis framework and care enough to keep going w/ our little chat.
About 'definitions' in politics especially it's just difficult. The rhetoric and propaganda and 'ends justify the means' style persuasion tactics make agreeing on definitions so difficult I've found. Every word is loaded with meaning whether the participants in the discussion intend them to be or not.
And if two sides can't agree on definitions then how can dialogue about the implications of the ideas those words represent occur? beats me
Points which I demonstrated your failure to grasp.
Yeah, here's the thing...I think we'd actually have a more productive discussion if we talked about what specific policy positions we support at this point. Funny thing is, we might agree on alot of policy positions, just disagree about the philosophical underpinnings and how we use logic to arrive t those policy positions. For me, all the talk of 'political spectrums' and whatnot is a means to an end, that end being a bill passed by Congress doing x,y and z things that will fix America's problems.
When you need to jump directly to ad hominem, you demonstrate the weakness of your position.
heh...two things:
1. I busted that out b/c i like to have fun on message boards, call me juvenile, but that's just how I roll.
2. 'ad hominem'... yes my attack on post-modernism was an ad hominem, and that's intentional. I read a paper somewhere (Stanley Fish maybe? I don't like him that much but I've read some of his NYTimes stuff) that discussed the "Liberal Arts" vs. "Hard Sciences" tug of war for resources (read=money) that is happening on university campuses. To be brief, the article was written by a Liberal Arts guy, and in his analysis, any criticism of Liberal Arts as being 'unnecessary' comming from a hard sciences guy was nothing more than an Ad Hominem attack.
I don't remember the whole article or if I agreed with what he was saying, but I did remember that one part, and have since decided that in my quest to defeat the intellectually reductive masturbatory moebuis strip that the word 'post-modernism' represents then I must fight fire with fire. In other words, the idea that post-modernism is a useful term to describe anything at all (architecture excluded...that word only is valuable in discussing architecture) can only be combated by using it's own 'logic' against itself.
Noam Chomsky said it best:
There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. -- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b)... I won't spell it out.
so, you agree with me, you are just wanting to further the conversation about the exact type of two axis spectrum to use.
Personally I feel one can use different two axis models to describe different aspects of society and politics. Ex. there is a two axis spectrum that describes religion vs. humanism...
I think that the two axis spectrum from "Political Spectrum" is the best of what I've seen at fitting most broad socio-political contexts. (That link you sent me has it copied, and discusses it).
About that link...that guy is doing the same thing you are...he uses language like he's out to re-invent the wheel when all he brings is a suggestion about improving it. And he uses the word 'post-modern'...whenever someone uses this word, be prepared to hear pretentious, effusive bullshit pedaled as insight.
Specifically,
They also make the incorrect assertion that "regulations" and "freedom" are inherently contradictory, while this is not really true - it all depends on the nature and execution of the regulations. For example, regulations that prevent slavery increase freedom.
No, here he misunderstands slavery as a legal institution. Under slavery, the STATE give the right to legally own people as property by defining slaves as such. You need look no further than the Constitution where slaves are listed to count as 3/5 of a person. So in an organized government that legally recognizes 'slaves' as property there is a revocation of freedom by "regulating" the definition of what can be considered "property" and enforcing laws as such. No contradiction here: regulation (slaves=legal property) in this case is contradictory to freedom.
it [political spectrum from "political spectrum"] leads to the incorrect characterization of "Fascism" and "Communism" as being similar or the same. Fascists and Communists disagreed on virtually every point, aside from the fact that they both opposed Liberalism
Here the author directly misunderstands how the political spectrum works. Fascism and Communism both deprive their citizens of social freedom (authoritarian), as he admits. Fascism gives more economic freedom (to the ones deemed worthy) while Communism is more collectivist minded. Ex: One of the things the Soviet Union prided itself on is their guarantee of employment. Fascism would never do that, by definition. Hence they are both authoritarian but at opposite ends of the other axis.
The author of that link seems to me to be trying to compensate for the fact that the two axis political spectrum accurately contextualizes the behavior of neo-con and Reagan/Bush republicans in the global comparative context. There's no denying the facts.
I do hope you respond to this post, as I'm interested to see where YOU are comming from.
In your respons, please directly address my two critiques of that link you sent.
you speak wisdom, and I am always in favor of thought experiments and 'what if...' especially in cosmology
it allowed the universe to be viewed in a different way
Yes. here is my point, I do not think the way we are currently viewing the universe (as a part of a multiverse) is useful. I think we can do better.
ex: we could view the universe as a massive confluence of zip drive dandylions that nunchuck the higgs anti-bosons into oblivion then refresh them via the Kobe/Shaq bridge at a rate of 5!/cat in Krull-space-time.
Is that model useful? No. Some models are more useful than others, and I maintain that the multi-verse model was fun for awhile but it was mostly just a novelty.
they are using this software in Afghanistan and Iraq to figure out possible locations of bomb building and enemy safe houses.
yeah, and how's that going? I bet if we use these models we could find those WMD too!
give me a break.
I am fully in favor using all tech at our disposal to be better at law enforcement (while still respecting civil rights of course), but what scares me is the underlying theories behind how they use this data. They actually think that all human behavior is quantifiable and that if we can just get a big enough database and the right algorithm (and maybe some pre-cogs) then we can END ALL CRIME! never...
Human behavior (including that of serial killers) has tendencies, but that's as far as we can pin it down. Deal with it.
As the first post explained, humans understand the 'don't shit where you eat' principle innately.
I like that a lot more then the 'one tiny bit off and you get nothing' thing. It sounds more plausible to me.
I'm not convinced in the slightest that a multiverse exists (in any sense of the word), but I agree that assuming things like Brane cosmology are true, the logical conclusion is that these other universes would, based on probability, have something recognizable to us as 'stars' and even 'life'
Possibility always wins when we play the probability game.
As I said above, I think the multiverse theories are a pantload of stink. When it comes to the very big and the very small, we can't ever seem to reconcile with infinity. There's always a smaller particle or a bigger cosmological super-structure...how long before we find that Higgs Bosons actually have a sub-particle or that there are actually multiple multi-verses? It's a reductive zero sum game...when in doubt, just add another layer of complexity.
I submit that instead of spinning our wheels thinking up bigger and smaller structures so we can get research grants, we should instead do whatever needs to be done to nail gravity down cold. Once we understand gravity as well as other forces, things will start making more sense such that these unprovable multi-verses and sub-sub-sub-sub particles will be unnecessary.
you missed the whole point of my post...modern politics is too complicated for a one axis 'left' and 'right' classification, that's why I linked to the two axis political spectrum.
all you did was bloviate your selective history and interpretation of the words 'left' and 'right' in contemporary usage. An analysis frought with myopic errors of context and definition.
Slashdot is generally pretty right-libertarian leaning
You're accurate with the libertarian, but the 'right' is just wrong. slashdot has a fairly even spread across the libertarian side of the scale, from totalitarian to anarchistic. It's one of the reasons I like/.
In no contemporary use of the word can slashdot in totality be considered 'right'...like it or not, right now, 'right' and 'republican' means NEOCONs.
NeoCons represent far-right totalitarian corporatists who cloak themselves in Victorian-era Christian 'values' marketing and PR rhetoric. I see VERY few comments on/. from this NeoCon perspective.
Please remember, 'politics' is not a linear, one-axis spectrum. It's two axis at least...
Huntington is certainly an excellent scientist, but his socio-political theories about why wars are fought are better left to experts in that field
Huntington points out that most of our modern wars have been caused by the nation-state, or an "imperial" grouping by politics that crosses these optimization lines
This argument is ridiculously reductive. First, what's the definition of 'war' in this context? I tried to imagine the different ways you can define 'war' and how they'd fit into this theory and none of them work.
This is good though:
as the superpower age winds down, people will identify with their optimization more than abstract and often illusory political concepts.
I don't agree that we're in a 'superpower age' that is 'winding down'...neither are accurate, HOWEVER, the idea that people (at least the younger Americans [felt right, geographically. It just fit. The climate affected everything about me in a positive way. When I moved back to Indiana, the humidity, allergens, etc. just wrecked me. I could feel my immune system changing, I swear. My friends would talk about similar feelings.
How this renewed understanding of geography and sub-species human differences will effect populations long term is a toss up. I feel that to say this genetic-based aspect of neo-tribalism (which itself has several components) will be THE guiding force in macro level human behavior is jumping the gun.
"Slow and steady wins the race" from the Tortoise and the Hare by Aesop
Here's the deal, most marketing is useless bullshit, just noise. It's a ridiculous cancerous growth on commerce, a growth facilitated by the way publicly held corporations focus only on the short term...next quarter's profits better but up! Gotta throw more $$$ into marketing research!
Like the fable says, those who plan for the long term will win.
Focus groups vs. "making games WE like to play" is not just a "different tactic" it's the difference between being a loser vs. a winner.
Specifically with EA sports: Let's look at what new game innovations were created due to focus groups vs. game innovations thought up by designers who love games. We'd find that the innovations that came from focus groups were generally regarded as useless by actual gamers (unless you hire the same people who did the focus group to do surveys of the effectiveness of the new innovations their focus groups lead to...)
This kind of marketing is a self perpetuating hydra spewing filth in all directions.
i think not finding any evidence of life even though water existed on Mars would be a bigger discovery then finding that some single cell life existed once. but that's just me
I think you're right... and I just think it's awesome. I'm 29 and I've had a fascination with Mars since I was about 5. I can remember when the best we could do is speculate that that those white ice cap looking formations at the poles *could* be ice. Then it was, 'it could be WATER ice.'
Right now we've got a robot on the surface with an analyzer that confirms that it is indeed H20.
Given what we know about life, the existence of water indicates that we will likely get some sort of evidence that there was life at some point.
Regarding TFA,
The other data not discussed openly yet are far more "provocative," Phoenix officials say.
They are being careful to say that this secret data is not definitive proof of life, but the fact that they think it's important enough to be considered before release to the public is interesting to say the least. I really don't see why they need to sit on the information, though.
Let's say they *did* discover evidence of Martian life. I don't think anyone would panic. I'm a Christian, and I'd love it if they found life out there. Doesn't affect my spiritual beliefs one bit, and everyone I know feels the same.
Slashdot Mirror
And the sheriff's office, and the FBI, and DHS, and ICE, and the mainstream media, and us...
Yep, us too. Every US citizen bears some responsibility. We should demand media coverage of these obvious civil rights violations, these people aren't violent anarchists, they are citizens protesting the government. We should demand a police force that upholds the law instead of subverting it. We should elect the leaders who will do the most to protect our civil rights.
We've been tolerating this kind of behavior since 9/11 out of fear. It's time to admit to ourselves that we overreacted to the events of 9/11 and allowed our government to trash our civil rights in the name of protecting us.
We let fascists take our country from us in the name of making a 'war on terror.'
Vote. Email or write your local, state and federal representatives. Email local and national news. Protest.
i'm going to try an analogy to maybe clear this up:
in a war, someone has to dig ditches for the latrines. it's vital that soldiers shit somewhere contained so as not to spread disease, etc. however, just b/c latrines are important doesn't mean you have your 3 star general out there maintaining them.
you want your best minds envisioning and planning strategy. You want them guiding the implementation of that strategy. sure, in a sense, every soldier in a war is a 'warfighter' just like every person in a business is part of 'sales'...but some soldiers dig latrine ditches, some are snipers, and some are planners and strategizers.
when someone says 'the CEO is a salesman' i understand it from one angle (everyone's a salesman/warfighter) but unfortunately, if you don't go any deeper than that, you end up with Jeffery B. Skillings or Carly Fiorino as your CEO. My point is, a CEO has a specific function, and when doing the nitty gritty of choosing who can fill that function, a business has to think beyond the PR/sales/marketing value and focus on a person's operational value.
That's also why I brought up McCain's VP pick. She's nothing more than a PR stunt (and a poorly conceived one at that). She is not capable from the operational perspective. Not in the slightest. Perception is not reality.
yeah, so did Enron. That's a ridiculous idea. A CEO is the highest executive who reports to (and is held accountable by) the board of directors. S/he is the highest decision maker and is responsible for envisioning and implementing the highest level strategy of the company.
I wonder how American big business has gotten so bad at what they do, then I read a comment like yours and understand.
Parent is a troll and makes a pointless argument (btw...make up your mind, is he over-qualified or under-qualified?)
Who wouldn't want someone in office who knew about how law works. That's what they do...they are lawmakers. Maybe that's why Repub's selected an air-headed pageant queen ditz for VP...easier for the puppetmasters to control.
For every evil, coke-headed, nihilistic, self-serving lawyer out there, there's a hard-working, fair-minded lawyer who's looking to 'stick it' to the man and all the other sell-out lawyers.
Who do you think argues in favor of cases you support that went to the supreme court? Was it construction workers? Programmers? Nope...
There are good lawyers and bad lawyers.
that's cool and all.
have you ever thought about, you know, interesting pictures and art and that kind of shit?
ffffound.com is a pretty interesting site with many pics and images of all types. Some really tech stuff...also some more hipster artsy stuff.
I find that having a thought provoking image on my desktop background prompts some creative thinking when I get to a dead end while i'm working...just sayin'
oops...posted bad link...meant to link here
now microsoft has officially left it's users black and blue
Fair enough...I just know what TFA said. Judging from other comments you are right on.
Someone below posted that the Ned. program is "just to get them ready for when they switch in 10 years" and makes it sound controversial and negative. If that's what they do, switch to OSS for basic office desktops in 10 years, then that's still far ahead of where the US is at all levels of gov't. Sure there may be a few forward-thinking municipalities, but...c'mon.
Also, 10 years isn't a ridiculous timeframe b/c (at least in the US...don't know Ned. tax law!) it takes at least 5 years for most purchases to depreciate for tax purposes. For items like desks, computers, etc. in an office, a business can't write the cost off all at once, they have to do it progressively according to tax law.
If they went to FOSS, they could take the 25 million they spent on M$ licenses (in 08 alone!) and pay local Quebecois to provide support. In fact, that's their whole grounds for bringing the case to court.
From TFA: "Quebec's public administration refuses to even consider and evaluate these options...the regulation implies that public markets have to enhance the local economic development as well as the Quebec technologies....From February to June 2008...sales of proprietary software for more than 25 million dollars"
Sounds like good case to me. My parents actually worked in the kind of local government that would be using this software, and I'm here to tell you, the transition would go fine. The fact is, most of them barely bumble their way through no matter WHAT software they use (on their outdated machines). All they use is a word processor, email, and maybe a spreadsheet and simple database. Just the basics.
This from TFA actually kinda scared me...scared because I'm worried about how far the US is falling behind other countries when it comes to tech: "In the Netherlands, the public administration, one of the most modern in the world, has decided to forbid the use of proprietary software in the public sector."
Yeah, you weren't kidding at all...
i'm not sure if you're joking or not but I was wanting to read more about the crackpot lizard planet. Do you have a link?
no. i really don't. honestly, you lost me, but it's good that you support using a two axis framework and care enough to keep going w/ our little chat.
About 'definitions' in politics especially it's just difficult. The rhetoric and propaganda and 'ends justify the means' style persuasion tactics make agreeing on definitions so difficult I've found. Every word is loaded with meaning whether the participants in the discussion intend them to be or not.
And if two sides can't agree on definitions then how can dialogue about the implications of the ideas those words represent occur? beats me
Yeah, here's the thing...I think we'd actually have a more productive discussion if we talked about what specific policy positions we support at this point. Funny thing is, we might agree on alot of policy positions, just disagree about the philosophical underpinnings and how we use logic to arrive t those policy positions. For me, all the talk of 'political spectrums' and whatnot is a means to an end, that end being a bill passed by Congress doing x,y and z things that will fix America's problems.
heh...two things:
1. I busted that out b/c i like to have fun on message boards, call me juvenile, but that's just how I roll.
2. 'ad hominem' ... yes my attack on post-modernism was an ad hominem, and that's intentional. I read a paper somewhere (Stanley Fish maybe? I don't like him that much but I've read some of his NYTimes stuff) that discussed the "Liberal Arts" vs. "Hard Sciences" tug of war for resources (read=money) that is happening on university campuses. To be brief, the article was written by a Liberal Arts guy, and in his analysis, any criticism of Liberal Arts as being 'unnecessary' comming from a hard sciences guy was nothing more than an Ad Hominem attack.
I don't remember the whole article or if I agreed with what he was saying, but I did remember that one part, and have since decided that in my quest to defeat the intellectually reductive masturbatory moebuis strip that the word 'post-modernism' represents then I must fight fire with fire. In other words, the idea that post-modernism is a useful term to describe anything at all (architecture excluded...that word only is valuable in discussing architecture) can only be combated by using it's own 'logic' against itself.
Noam Chomsky said it best:
are you a Christian? me too!
Look up
so, you agree with me, you are just wanting to further the conversation about the exact type of two axis spectrum to use.
Personally I feel one can use different two axis models to describe different aspects of society and politics. Ex. there is a two axis spectrum that describes religion vs. humanism...
I think that the two axis spectrum from "Political Spectrum" is the best of what I've seen at fitting most broad socio-political contexts. (That link you sent me has it copied, and discusses it).
About that link...that guy is doing the same thing you are...he uses language like he's out to re-invent the wheel when all he brings is a suggestion about improving it. And he uses the word 'post-modern'...whenever someone uses this word, be prepared to hear pretentious, effusive bullshit pedaled as insight.
Specifically,
No, here he misunderstands slavery as a legal institution. Under slavery, the STATE give the right to legally own people as property by defining slaves as such. You need look no further than the Constitution where slaves are listed to count as 3/5 of a person. So in an organized government that legally recognizes 'slaves' as property there is a revocation of freedom by "regulating" the definition of what can be considered "property" and enforcing laws as such. No contradiction here: regulation (slaves=legal property) in this case is contradictory to freedom.
Here the author directly misunderstands how the political spectrum works. Fascism and Communism both deprive their citizens of social freedom (authoritarian), as he admits. Fascism gives more economic freedom (to the ones deemed worthy) while Communism is more collectivist minded. Ex: One of the things the Soviet Union prided itself on is their guarantee of employment. Fascism would never do that, by definition. Hence they are both authoritarian but at opposite ends of the other axis.
The author of that link seems to me to be trying to compensate for the fact that the two axis political spectrum accurately contextualizes the behavior of neo-con and Reagan/Bush republicans in the global comparative context. There's no denying the facts.
I do hope you respond to this post, as I'm interested to see where YOU are comming from.
In your respons, please directly address my two critiques of that link you sent.
I always love these lego creations. The swimming cube and bird's nest were a feat.
I was looking for this as well.
there, fixed that for you
libertarians have several logical policies...it's the ones that are secretly neo-cons using libertarian rhetoric that are really anti-logic
so you're a cab driver??? ;)
you speak wisdom, and I am always in favor of thought experiments and 'what if...' especially in cosmology
Yes. here is my point, I do not think the way we are currently viewing the universe (as a part of a multiverse) is useful. I think we can do better.
ex: we could view the universe as a massive confluence of zip drive dandylions that nunchuck the higgs anti-bosons into oblivion then refresh them via the Kobe/Shaq bridge at a rate of 5!/cat in Krull-space-time.
Is that model useful? No. Some models are more useful than others, and I maintain that the multi-verse model was fun for awhile but it was mostly just a novelty.
yeah, and how's that going? I bet if we use these models we could find those WMD too!
give me a break.
I am fully in favor using all tech at our disposal to be better at law enforcement (while still respecting civil rights of course), but what scares me is the underlying theories behind how they use this data. They actually think that all human behavior is quantifiable and that if we can just get a big enough database and the right algorithm (and maybe some pre-cogs) then we can END ALL CRIME! never...
Human behavior (including that of serial killers) has tendencies, but that's as far as we can pin it down. Deal with it.
As the first post explained, humans understand the 'don't shit where you eat' principle innately.
I'm not convinced in the slightest that a multiverse exists (in any sense of the word), but I agree that assuming things like Brane cosmology are true, the logical conclusion is that these other universes would, based on probability, have something recognizable to us as 'stars' and even 'life'
Possibility always wins when we play the probability game.
As I said above, I think the multiverse theories are a pantload of stink. When it comes to the very big and the very small, we can't ever seem to reconcile with infinity. There's always a smaller particle or a bigger cosmological super-structure...how long before we find that Higgs Bosons actually have a sub-particle or that there are actually multiple multi-verses? It's a reductive zero sum game...when in doubt, just add another layer of complexity.
I submit that instead of spinning our wheels thinking up bigger and smaller structures so we can get research grants, we should instead do whatever needs to be done to nail gravity down cold. Once we understand gravity as well as other forces, things will start making more sense such that these unprovable multi-verses and sub-sub-sub-sub particles will be unnecessary.
c'mon Darby!
you missed the whole point of my post...modern politics is too complicated for a one axis 'left' and 'right' classification, that's why I linked to the two axis political spectrum.
all you did was bloviate your selective history and interpretation of the words 'left' and 'right' in contemporary usage. An analysis frought with myopic errors of context and definition.
You're accurate with the libertarian, but the 'right' is just wrong. slashdot has a fairly even spread across the libertarian side of the scale, from totalitarian to anarchistic. It's one of the reasons I like /.
In no contemporary use of the word can slashdot in totality be considered 'right'...like it or not, right now, 'right' and 'republican' means NEOCONs.
NeoCons represent far-right totalitarian corporatists who cloak themselves in Victorian-era Christian 'values' marketing and PR rhetoric. I see VERY few comments on /. from this NeoCon perspective.
Please remember, 'politics' is not a linear, one-axis spectrum. It's two axis at least...
Huntington is certainly an excellent scientist, but his socio-political theories about why wars are fought are better left to experts in that field
This argument is ridiculously reductive. First, what's the definition of 'war' in this context? I tried to imagine the different ways you can define 'war' and how they'd fit into this theory and none of them work.
This is good though:
I don't agree that we're in a 'superpower age' that is 'winding down'...neither are accurate, HOWEVER, the idea that people (at least the younger Americans [felt right, geographically. It just fit. The climate affected everything about me in a positive way. When I moved back to Indiana, the humidity, allergens, etc. just wrecked me. I could feel my immune system changing, I swear. My friends would talk about similar feelings.
How this renewed understanding of geography and sub-species human differences will effect populations long term is a toss up. I feel that to say this genetic-based aspect of neo-tribalism (which itself has several components) will be THE guiding force in macro level human behavior is jumping the gun.
"Slow and steady wins the race" from the Tortoise and the Hare by Aesop
Here's the deal, most marketing is useless bullshit, just noise. It's a ridiculous cancerous growth on commerce, a growth facilitated by the way publicly held corporations focus only on the short term...next quarter's profits better but up! Gotta throw more $$$ into marketing research!
Like the fable says, those who plan for the long term will win.
Focus groups vs. "making games WE like to play" is not just a "different tactic" it's the difference between being a loser vs. a winner.
Specifically with EA sports: Let's look at what new game innovations were created due to focus groups vs. game innovations thought up by designers who love games. We'd find that the innovations that came from focus groups were generally regarded as useless by actual gamers (unless you hire the same people who did the focus group to do surveys of the effectiveness of the new innovations their focus groups lead to...)
This kind of marketing is a self perpetuating hydra spewing filth in all directions.
Given what happened with LSD I'm getting pretty stoked to see how we can un-weaponize these new pharmaceuticals and tech.
I think you're right... and I just think it's awesome. I'm 29 and I've had a fascination with Mars since I was about 5. I can remember when the best we could do is speculate that that those white ice cap looking formations at the poles *could* be ice. Then it was, 'it could be WATER ice.'
Right now we've got a robot on the surface with an analyzer that confirms that it is indeed H20.
Given what we know about life, the existence of water indicates that we will likely get some sort of evidence that there was life at some point.
Regarding TFA,
They are being careful to say that this secret data is not definitive proof of life, but the fact that they think it's important enough to be considered before release to the public is interesting to say the least. I really don't see why they need to sit on the information, though.
Let's say they *did* discover evidence of Martian life. I don't think anyone would panic. I'm a Christian, and I'd love it if they found life out there. Doesn't affect my spiritual beliefs one bit, and everyone I know feels the same.
Just tell us for crying out loud