Holding the position of power in a family is one of the two elements of a patriarchy.
What does this have to do with telemarketers asking for the head of the house?
The fact that most Slashdotters are from the US, and when someone makes a comment about society, the default assumption is US society
I was actually speaking of the world in general, although the US is certainly one of the countries of the kind i was speaking of. Almost all first world nations are de facto patriachal although not de jure. If you really want i can dig up a whole mass of figures showing that women are under-paid, under-promoted, and under-represented.
If you want to get nit-picky i suppose we should make a distinction between a de jure patriarchy and a de facto patriarchy. Yes, she would disagree violently at the suggestion that you have legal control over. However she might very likely agree however that our current society prefessionaly undervalues and socially stereotypes women.
When was the last time you had a telemarketer ask for the "head of the household"?
What does that have to do with anything? I'm honestly confused.
The US is not a patriarchy.
Did i say the US was a patriachy? Did i say any country/society in particular was a patriarchy? Perhaps the fact that you assumed i was speaking of the US reveals something in and of itself?;)
There are scientific studies done on this subject. WHERE did these 'stereotypes' get started? WHY does society 'perpetuate' them?. Many who think like you are unable to even approach these questions in any meaningful way.
These sterotypes got started and were perpetuated because for a large chunk of history most human societies have been patriachal.
The patriarchal system most likely got it's start when humans were forming proto-tribal units. At that point in time there was a big surplus of males, because a single male could impregnate many females, while the females could only bear one child at a time (usually.) As in many other species, natural selection therefore favored groups in which the males went out and did the more dangerous hunting activities, while the females did the gathering.
Since the males were performing the more dangerous tasks (with the exception of pregnancy) natural selection favored size and strength in them. That size and strength gave the males the ability to dominate the females, and the fact that the male's genetic representation in the next generation depended on the number of females he mated with, he was encouraged to use that ability. Note that many if not all early human socities started out as polygamous.
The males didn't care very much about the "attractiveness" of the females (ie how good of a genetic stock they seemed to have, however they judged that) but rather how many they could mate with. They might show a preference for mating with the most desireable females first, but that wouldn't stop them from trying to mate with every other female they could get their hands on. This correlates rather well with the observation that males seem to be more attracted to "average" females.
Females on the other hand, since they can only bear children from one father at a time, are quite interested in finding the best father possible. Studies of primates groups have shown that females will "cheat" on the dominate male in order to mate with males they believe offer a better genetic selection to their future children. For males examining the females is of secondary importance, for females it is of first priority.
In that old "natural" setting, both males and females tend to display to attract mates, however males display to attract as many mates of whatever quality as they can, while females attempt to attract one or a small number of "superior" males.
The whole process of developing civilization screwed with this a bit (to understate it _just_ a bit) however in general, the males used their greater strength to create a patriarchy which encouraged the females to accept the mates chosen for them by the males. Females were discouraged from having power both because of the social belief that the males were superior, and at a more fundamental level because power might give the females the ability to choose their own mates, thereby threatening the base of the patriarchy.
Since the females were encouraged to believe they were powerless, their means of "survival" depended on finding a good mate who could support them, but without any power of their own the only means of attracting such a mate was through appearing attractive. Although ideally they would want to target specific individuals, dressing up and wearing makeup tends to lead to a shotgun effect that targets all males in the are indescriminately.
That explains how the stereotypes got started, and they were maintained for the same reason any power structure is maintained, because those in power like being at the top, and resist any change that would remove them from power.
Now that the patriarchy is starting to break down, we're seeing some of those rules change. There are more and more women who don't wear makeup and don't dress up any more than the guys do. And more and more of them are willing to admit to being interested in ogling guys in one way or another. The societal standards from the patriarchy are still lingering on however (and some would argue about wheth
Yeah, and the PS2 broadband adapter probably retails for about as much too. However that doesn't change the fact that the basic unbundled PS2 droped $20, while the basic unbundled GCN hasn't budged.
When are they going to learn? IANA Marketing Executive, but last i heard the GameCube did pretty badly over christmas because they didn't match the XBox's special offer, and are now only begining to catch up again thanks to Zelda. Now they are yet again deciding not to follow step with the other consoles, and thinking it will somehow turn out alright. Yeah, Sony is doing the broadband adapter bundle, but they're _also_ lowering the price on PS2s without the bundle! And Microsoft got the clue and dropped their prices acordingly.
I still think Nintendo has the coolest system out there and has lots of potential, but someone in the upper echelons of management needs to pull their head out of their ass!
A lot of games involve the characters beating up people, or killing things. Do they have a problem with this style of game? The fact that such games seem to dominate the spectrum (although has anyone done any actual numeric analysis of that?) might be a valid complaint, but that doesn't really address females in games.
Are they upset that the females are frequently scantily clad and/or of unlikely anatomical proportions? That doesn't really seem to be the main issue addressed.
The complaint seems to be that the females are in the same game behaving in the same way as the males. This is a problem because? I can't imagine that if developers were to follow her apparent desire and remove all females form games that feature violence that she or someone like her wouldn't be complaining that females are underrepresented in games.
I guess she wants the female characters to show up, refuse to fight, and make a speech about defying the patriarchy before exiting the arena? I'm sure that would go over _really_ well.
I'm all for feminism, but railing against the fact that girls are in the game, and they're acting exactly like the guys! seems to me to be a pretty dumb complaint. But maybe i'm just missing something.
Obviously Lara Croft is for gamers to ogle at. What planet do you have to be from to not know women are the ogled ones? They know it, they wear the make-up and the pretty dresses.
Now _that_ isn't sexist at all.
Apparently the planet is earth. Women spend pleanty of time ogling guys, the only real difference i know of is that the girls have better standards for which guys they ogle at. (If i were a girl of the same general attractiveness as my male self, i could put on some sexy clothes and get hit on by lots of guys. However as a male, the only female who even notices me is my girlfriend =) Some girls complain about women being sex objects in games, but others say the problem is that there need to be an equal number of scantily clad guys to look at as well.
There would be a lot more Chip 'n Dale type places if our society didn't perpetuate the stereotype that men ogle and women are the object of the ogling.
If you don't have a lot of money, you go shop at Safeway or Albertsons where they have those two for one price cards and crap.
That's exactly what _i_ said. The real poor shop at supermarkets and cook their own food.
I'm disputing the idea that fast food is aimed at the poor. Fast food is aimed at the stupid, and the middle-class to waalthy who are short on time. Hence the moniker "fast food." Rich people don't buy fast food? In that case please explain all the luxury SUVs i'm always seeing in the drive-throughs.
"Online Journal" - too many sylables and.... hey! you're trying to get me to say two words aren't you!
People aren't very nice are they?
on
Dancing Barefoot
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
*looks at the replies to this and other posts*
Wow, people suck. I hope these are just a fringe element, and not a representative sample of the current slashdot population.
So for a different perspective, i thought Wesley Crusher was an annoying git, even though i'm a bit jealous of the name recognition (better to rule in hell than serve in heaven or some such.) I know very little about you, but you seem like an okay guy based off the posts here. Cool! You've got a book out! Wish i could do that:) Hope it does well!
There is no _new_ tax! You're not going to be paying anything if you don't live in california! Get a grip people!
That being said, i wonder a bit that a move that they say will gain about $20 million total in taxes is being considered only because of a $35 _billion_ deficit. If i were at mortal risk from an internal hemhorage, my first priority of concern would not be dealing with a papercut.
You know why there aren't any fast food resturants in expensive areas? Because it's expensive to own property there! And i don't see Trader Joes or Whole Foods stores in those areas either! They build quite a lot in middle-class areas however, where the land price is more reasonable.
I must be a "rich people" since i can afford to shop at Trader Joes and Whole Foods. Guess where i get most of my food from though? Fast food resturants! Know why? Cause i have money, but no time! Fast food is expensive! Most of my poorer friends by food at the supermarket (also seen in low and middle class neighborhoods, not "rich" ones) because it's a lot cheaper! They'll go out to the fast food resturants as a "treat" once in awhile when they're feeling too exhausted to cook for themselves.
Perhaps tehre are some poor people who are also very stupid, however i haven't seen too many of them.
I'm guessing if CA would better regulate he illegal immigration, they'd save a ton of money slipping out through welfare...etc.
Last i checked, illegal immigrants don't get welfare, and as someone else pointed out, those underpaid illegal immigrants are part of the reason you pay so little for food at the supermarket.
Namco withdrew it's merger offer, which leaves Sega out in the cold with no current offers. There's always the rumors about EA or Microsoft buying them out though, which would be a real disaster in my opinion. Namco or Sammy would have been good, but failing that, maybe Nintendo will decide to play white knight since i'd far prefer them to EA or Microsoft.
But scarier still is not doing something to protect ourselves against demonstrably real threats. We found this out, of course, on September 11.
Or we could perhaps just grit our teeth and accept that we live in a world in which we face a number of risks each day, and not give up our freedoms and privacy in order to combat just one of them.
It doesn't have to be power, the machines could just as easily need the computational power to keep certain aspects of their society running, and Neo shutting down the Matrix would have the same effects.
However, "all the power got turned off and everyone died," is a lot easier for the average stupid american to understand than "the human computing power got turned off which lead to failure of critical system that depended on quantum computing to function." The loss of power is probably more exciting in film too, lots of things blowing up and such (why do things always blow up in movies if they lose power?)
In the first movie (the feature film, not the Animatrix), the crew of the Neb claims that the only effective weapon the humans possess against the machines is an electromagnetic pulse. Now, at the start of this short, the human race uses what certainly appear to be a large number of nuclear weapons to attack the machine nation of 01. According to the short, the robots survive this assault, as they are made of metal, and robots are strong. [robotcombat.com] But shouldn't those nukes have an attendant EMP, making the 'bots far more vulnerable?
Wow, you're right, i never thought of that. If that was the Second Renaisance, maybe they're in a (relative) Dark Age now, and have forgotten how to harden themselves against EMPs?:)
Speaking of not knowing what you're talking about, you just said a mouthful.
You said it not i. Oh wait, you _thought_ you were talking about me.
There's this thing called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You can't get more out of a system than you put in. You can't even get as much out again, some is always wasted as heat. People have been trying to figure out a way around that law for centuries, and if you think you've found a way, it's 99.999999% certain that you're just not accounting for all the steps.
Yeah, the humans scorched the sky, so what? It doesn't matter that there's no sun in this equation. HUMANS DO NOT PRODUCE ENERGY! We do not even _store_ energy very well!
Sure they grind up the humans to feed other humans, but that is not a self-sustaining cycle! You need some kind of energy input. In the natural world all energy comes from one of two sources, fusion power via the sun, or gravitational compression power via the earth's core. The sun is mostly gone, at least in terms of direct sunlight, although the earth is getting at least some heat through the cloud layer or it would freeze over (it's probably got a much higher greenhouse effect, but the green house effect can't be 100% efficient, so there has to be some input)
So the machine's only natural sources are geothermal power, and fossil fuels and anything else that has sun power stored up. They also have the options of fission and fusion, the later being mentioned in the movie.
They could use those sources of energy to produce more nutrients to keep the humans' "ecosystem" going. However as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, growing food to feed to animals is horribly energy inefficient. The machines could use this energy source directly and get far more out of it than they would eventually be able to extract from the humans that absorbed the nutrients that the machines could grow with the energy.
As for the cows, like i said, even if they went with this INSANE idea of using high level living beings to produce energy, any mammal would do. Sure, the cows are most likely all dead now (except perhaps in Zion, and you're assuming the machiens don't have advanced cloning capabilities) however at the time the machines made this decision there were cows alive!
When fighting the war, why didn't any of the machines say, instead of capturing all these humans, why not just KILL all the humans and round up some of the starving cattle and use them instead? Even if all the cows were dead, they could use dogs, or jackals, or rats, or anything else that could survive off of all the dead animals and humans lying around, which there would have been quite a lot of during the war. Humans were not the only option, and were a really stupid choice unless power is not what the machines are really getting out of them.
They're _still_ sticking with the claim that the machines are using people as a source of energy!
That makes abolutly _no_ sense. Entropy makes it very unlikely that getting energy from people would be more efficient than converting the stuff they're using to feed the people directly into energy, especially given the "along with a kind of fusion" remark in the first movie. Even if that weren't true, _cows_ would be a much better source of energy, they're 100% herbivores and thus more efficient, and the machines wouldn't need to bother with the matrix at all for cows.
The only reasonable explanation is that Morpheus doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He assumes the people are being used as a power source because he's not up on his basic physics, in actuality the people are being used as processors for tasks that the human brain is well suited for but the machine style AI can't handle efficiently.
Unfortunatly with the Second Renaisance Part 2, we need to expand the circle of people who have no clue what they're talking about and include the archivist, or whatever the narator is, in the group.
People who buy a car and never so much as change the oil let alone tune it up or check it up; then they bitch and moan when they start having problems and ultimately trade it in on something else they aren't going to take care of before they are anywhere near 100k on the odometer. Catering to these people (i.e. substantiating the MS BS by pandering to it) isn't going to help any vendor in particular, or the industry in general.
The automobile industry is quite happy that people upgrade cars far more frequently than is really necessary. Please explain why hardware vendors wouldn't be equally happy with a similar trend for computers.
Slashdot Mirror
No, i _like_ cars, because they enable greater individualism. Leftists like individualism!
Rightists are the ones who hate individualism! Rightists want everyone to bow down and think the same way they do. Rightists hate cars!
What does this have to do with telemarketers asking for the head of the house?
The fact that most Slashdotters are from the US, and when someone makes a comment about society, the default assumption is US society
I was actually speaking of the world in general, although the US is certainly one of the countries of the kind i was speaking of. Almost all first world nations are de facto patriachal although not de jure. If you really want i can dig up a whole mass of figures showing that women are under-paid, under-promoted, and under-represented.
If you want to get nit-picky i suppose we should make a distinction between a de jure patriarchy and a de facto patriarchy. Yes, she would disagree violently at the suggestion that you have legal control over. However she might very likely agree however that our current society prefessionaly undervalues and socially stereotypes women.
What does that have to do with anything? I'm honestly confused.
The US is not a patriarchy.
Did i say the US was a patriachy? Did i say any country/society in particular was a patriarchy? Perhaps the fact that you assumed i was speaking of the US reveals something in and of itself? ;)
These sterotypes got started and were perpetuated because for a large chunk of history most human societies have been patriachal.
The patriarchal system most likely got it's start when humans were forming proto-tribal units. At that point in time there was a big surplus of males, because a single male could impregnate many females, while the females could only bear one child at a time (usually.) As in many other species, natural selection therefore favored groups in which the males went out and did the more dangerous hunting activities, while the females did the gathering.
Since the males were performing the more dangerous tasks (with the exception of pregnancy) natural selection favored size and strength in them. That size and strength gave the males the ability to dominate the females, and the fact that the male's genetic representation in the next generation depended on the number of females he mated with, he was encouraged to use that ability. Note that many if not all early human socities started out as polygamous.
The males didn't care very much about the "attractiveness" of the females (ie how good of a genetic stock they seemed to have, however they judged that) but rather how many they could mate with. They might show a preference for mating with the most desireable females first, but that wouldn't stop them from trying to mate with every other female they could get their hands on. This correlates rather well with the observation that males seem to be more attracted to "average" females.
Females on the other hand, since they can only bear children from one father at a time, are quite interested in finding the best father possible. Studies of primates groups have shown that females will "cheat" on the dominate male in order to mate with males they believe offer a better genetic selection to their future children. For males examining the females is of secondary importance, for females it is of first priority.
In that old "natural" setting, both males and females tend to display to attract mates, however males display to attract as many mates of whatever quality as they can, while females attempt to attract one or a small number of "superior" males.
The whole process of developing civilization screwed with this a bit (to understate it _just_ a bit) however in general, the males used their greater strength to create a patriarchy which encouraged the females to accept the mates chosen for them by the males. Females were discouraged from having power both because of the social belief that the males were superior, and at a more fundamental level because power might give the females the ability to choose their own mates, thereby threatening the base of the patriarchy.
Since the females were encouraged to believe they were powerless, their means of "survival" depended on finding a good mate who could support them, but without any power of their own the only means of attracting such a mate was through appearing attractive. Although ideally they would want to target specific individuals, dressing up and wearing makeup tends to lead to a shotgun effect that targets all males in the are indescriminately.
That explains how the stereotypes got started, and they were maintained for the same reason any power structure is maintained, because those in power like being at the top, and resist any change that would remove them from power.
Now that the patriarchy is starting to break down, we're seeing some of those rules change. There are more and more women who don't wear makeup and don't dress up any more than the guys do. And more and more of them are willing to admit to being interested in ogling guys in one way or another. The societal standards from the patriarchy are still lingering on however (and some would argue about wheth
Yeah, and the PS2 broadband adapter probably retails for about as much too. However that doesn't change the fact that the basic unbundled PS2 droped $20, while the basic unbundled GCN hasn't budged.
I still think Nintendo has the coolest system out there and has lots of potential, but someone in the upper echelons of management needs to pull their head out of their ass!
Are they upset that the females are frequently scantily clad and/or of unlikely anatomical proportions? That doesn't really seem to be the main issue addressed.
The complaint seems to be that the females are in the same game behaving in the same way as the males. This is a problem because? I can't imagine that if developers were to follow her apparent desire and remove all females form games that feature violence that she or someone like her wouldn't be complaining that females are underrepresented in games.
I guess she wants the female characters to show up, refuse to fight, and make a speech about defying the patriarchy before exiting the arena? I'm sure that would go over _really_ well.
I'm all for feminism, but railing against the fact that girls are in the game, and they're acting exactly like the guys! seems to me to be a pretty dumb complaint. But maybe i'm just missing something.
Now _that_ isn't sexist at all.
Apparently the planet is earth. Women spend pleanty of time ogling guys, the only real difference i know of is that the girls have better standards for which guys they ogle at. (If i were a girl of the same general attractiveness as my male self, i could put on some sexy clothes and get hit on by lots of guys. However as a male, the only female who even notices me is my girlfriend =) Some girls complain about women being sex objects in games, but others say the problem is that there need to be an equal number of scantily clad guys to look at as well.
There would be a lot more Chip 'n Dale type places if our society didn't perpetuate the stereotype that men ogle and women are the object of the ogling.
Not when they're living in a patriarchy.
If you don't have a lot of money, you go shop at Safeway or Albertsons where they have those two for one price cards and crap.
That's exactly what _i_ said. The real poor shop at supermarkets and cook their own food.
I'm disputing the idea that fast food is aimed at the poor. Fast food is aimed at the stupid, and the middle-class to waalthy who are short on time. Hence the moniker "fast food." Rich people don't buy fast food? In that case please explain all the luxury SUVs i'm always seeing in the drive-throughs.
"Online Journal" - too many sylables and.... hey! you're trying to get me to say two words aren't you!
Wow, people suck. I hope these are just a fringe element, and not a representative sample of the current slashdot population.
So for a different perspective, i thought Wesley Crusher was an annoying git, even though i'm a bit jealous of the name recognition (better to rule in hell than serve in heaven or some such.) I know very little about you, but you seem like an okay guy based off the posts here. Cool! You've got a book out! Wish i could do that :) Hope it does well!
That being said, i wonder a bit that a move that they say will gain about $20 million total in taxes is being considered only because of a $35 _billion_ deficit. If i were at mortal risk from an internal hemhorage, my first priority of concern would not be dealing with a papercut.
I must be a "rich people" since i can afford to shop at Trader Joes and Whole Foods. Guess where i get most of my food from though? Fast food resturants! Know why? Cause i have money, but no time! Fast food is expensive! Most of my poorer friends by food at the supermarket (also seen in low and middle class neighborhoods, not "rich" ones) because it's a lot cheaper! They'll go out to the fast food resturants as a "treat" once in awhile when they're feeling too exhausted to cook for themselves.
Perhaps tehre are some poor people who are also very stupid, however i haven't seen too many of them.
You're making zero sense here.
Last i checked, illegal immigrants don't get welfare, and as someone else pointed out, those underpaid illegal immigrants are part of the reason you pay so little for food at the supermarket.
Yeah, Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 sucked so bad, it's just my masochistic streak that makes me keep wanting to play them.
Here's a news flash guys, "Final Fantasy: Stone Chronicles" doesn't sound like a great idea for a title.
Namco withdrew it's merger offer, which leaves Sega out in the cold with no current offers. There's always the rumors about EA or Microsoft buying them out though, which would be a real disaster in my opinion. Namco or Sammy would have been good, but failing that, maybe Nintendo will decide to play white knight since i'd far prefer them to EA or Microsoft.
Or we could perhaps just grit our teeth and accept that we live in a world in which we face a number of risks each day, and not give up our freedoms and privacy in order to combat just one of them.
However, "all the power got turned off and everyone died," is a lot easier for the average stupid american to understand than "the human computing power got turned off which lead to failure of critical system that depended on quantum computing to function." The loss of power is probably more exciting in film too, lots of things blowing up and such (why do things always blow up in movies if they lose power?)
Wow, you're right, i never thought of that. If that was the Second Renaisance, maybe they're in a (relative) Dark Age now, and have forgotten how to harden themselves against EMPs? :)
You said it not i. Oh wait, you _thought_ you were talking about me.
There's this thing called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You can't get more out of a system than you put in. You can't even get as much out again, some is always wasted as heat. People have been trying to figure out a way around that law for centuries, and if you think you've found a way, it's 99.999999% certain that you're just not accounting for all the steps.
Yeah, the humans scorched the sky, so what? It doesn't matter that there's no sun in this equation. HUMANS DO NOT PRODUCE ENERGY! We do not even _store_ energy very well!
Sure they grind up the humans to feed other humans, but that is not a self-sustaining cycle! You need some kind of energy input. In the natural world all energy comes from one of two sources, fusion power via the sun, or gravitational compression power via the earth's core. The sun is mostly gone, at least in terms of direct sunlight, although the earth is getting at least some heat through the cloud layer or it would freeze over (it's probably got a much higher greenhouse effect, but the green house effect can't be 100% efficient, so there has to be some input)
So the machine's only natural sources are geothermal power, and fossil fuels and anything else that has sun power stored up. They also have the options of fission and fusion, the later being mentioned in the movie.
They could use those sources of energy to produce more nutrients to keep the humans' "ecosystem" going. However as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, growing food to feed to animals is horribly energy inefficient. The machines could use this energy source directly and get far more out of it than they would eventually be able to extract from the humans that absorbed the nutrients that the machines could grow with the energy.
As for the cows, like i said, even if they went with this INSANE idea of using high level living beings to produce energy, any mammal would do. Sure, the cows are most likely all dead now (except perhaps in Zion, and you're assuming the machiens don't have advanced cloning capabilities) however at the time the machines made this decision there were cows alive!
When fighting the war, why didn't any of the machines say, instead of capturing all these humans, why not just KILL all the humans and round up some of the starving cattle and use them instead? Even if all the cows were dead, they could use dogs, or jackals, or rats, or anything else that could survive off of all the dead animals and humans lying around, which there would have been quite a lot of during the war. Humans were not the only option, and were a really stupid choice unless power is not what the machines are really getting out of them.
That makes abolutly _no_ sense. Entropy makes it very unlikely that getting energy from people would be more efficient than converting the stuff they're using to feed the people directly into energy, especially given the "along with a kind of fusion" remark in the first movie. Even if that weren't true, _cows_ would be a much better source of energy, they're 100% herbivores and thus more efficient, and the machines wouldn't need to bother with the matrix at all for cows.
The only reasonable explanation is that Morpheus doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He assumes the people are being used as a power source because he's not up on his basic physics, in actuality the people are being used as processors for tasks that the human brain is well suited for but the machine style AI can't handle efficiently.
Unfortunatly with the Second Renaisance Part 2, we need to expand the circle of people who have no clue what they're talking about and include the archivist, or whatever the narator is, in the group.
The automobile industry is quite happy that people upgrade cars far more frequently than is really necessary. Please explain why hardware vendors wouldn't be equally happy with a similar trend for computers.