The difference today is that the controlling group has female members. There is still a control of the majority by the minority
Hrm. I'd debate that you or I qualify for the 'majority' part of that sentence -- if there's an elite, we're it. Not that I feel bad about that at all. As for 'control,' citizens of Western (or well-Westernized) countries are significantly freer than citizens of less-developed or Eastern-bloc nations. US citizens in particular enjoy the greatest range of freedoms available in the world today. What threatens these freedoms is the ongoing abdication of personal responsibility. It's not my fault. The government should have stopped me. The government should have educated me. The government should have given me the tools to make a better person of myself. It's not my fault.
This refrain is heard over and over again. The voting public has discovered they can vote themselves money from the public till and the inevitable collapse of the governing system is happening all around us. If anything, there is less control now than ever before.
I understand a lot of men are really pissed off at being treated like the enemy for so long.
There is no enemy. There is no chamber of 12 old people getting together to Rule the World. There's just fallible old folks bumbling around, being greedy jerks and short-sighted fools, and sometimes (but not most of the time) evil.
If you have these types of conversations with women, about what their experience in the world as awoman is really like - you won't make silly comments like how women are equal now. Because I have a pile of experiences that you are unlikely to share...
A white woman walking down the street with her Latino sweetie is exposed to narstiness. A straight white man walking down the street is equally exposed to narstiness. The point is, we have reached equality -- we are all equally likely to be harassed by idiots. It's one of the liberating aspects of freedom -- gayfolk are as able, and as likely, to straightbash as straightfolk to gaybash. Freer, if anything -- I've caught gay friends making comments that would get them pilloried if the targets of the comments were anything other than white and straight.
It is by talking to each other, not assuming about each other, that we find out what we are like.
Right. That's what we're trying to do now. That's why your comments on the control of the majority by the minority are suspect -- unless you've talked to the members of the 'controlling minority' to know what they're like and what their plans are, it's foolish to say they control the majority (similarly undefined), or even to assume that it's a bad thing.
WTF? Of course you have the freedom to be mean. This isn't freaking Tele Tubby Land. Conversely, people have the freedom to get away from mean people and stop listening to them. Duh.
[hands you a small pamphlet entitled 'Learning to Cope']
Erotica demands a higher level of cerebration than porn, which speaks more directly to the critter-brain (Og see sex! MMM, Og like sex!). Erotica usually tries to be artsy and include a plot and characters. Interacting with fiction, whether text or video, requires some degree of suspension of disbelief, identification with characters, and empathy, and these are all tasks that take CPU cycles away from from the hindbrain, which wants to go "Og see NAUGHTY BITZ! MMM!!"
And of course, a lot of modern erotica, like a lot of modern art, is Bad Art (self-involved delusional wanking) and hence inherently difficult to get aroused to/appreciate anyway.
Porn, on the other hand, is simple, visceral, and (in a good way) brutal. There's no tricky sauce, just aroused people doing what aroused people do with the intent to get the porn-observer aroused.
Subtle exclusionary behaviors are very easily (a) ignored, (b) unnoticed (because they're so subtle), and (c) gotten over.
I've never felt slighted by male-centered language such as 'guys' or the use of 'he,' much less excluded. Ascribing intentionality to a person's use of language ("he said 'he' to exclude me because I'm female! Waaah!") without examining the context of the statement ("anyone is welcome to say whatever he wants.") is silly Deconstructionist cant. If people say something, accept it at face value without poking around in their phrasing for subtle insult that isn't intended.
Well, it's not like he's the only one. Katz himself was the first to publish his experiences as part of a Spooky Evil Cyberspace Trend. And Katz' experiences just don't conform to observed reality. My experiences are a lot more in line with the poster's than Katz' -- more civility, rather than less. Anonymity doesn't necessarily mean freedom from accountability -- you can use the same pseudonym over a period of time, and that pseudonym gains its own credibility based on the messages it originates.
So you should change your email address when it gets so spammed that you can't use it anymore? What happens when every email address is that way? When happens when every USENET forum is that way? ALmost every communicaton o nthe internet that isn't somehow moderated is already suffering from these problems.
Wow. That is just so not true. I read Usenet and post with my real email address. Neither my email address nor the Usenet groups I read are spammed above the point of 'negligible nuisance.' I get about 10 spam messages a day, which collectively take maybe 20 seconds to deal with. I spend more time waiting for red lights to turn green. Spam is just not a problem for the average end-user of the Internet these days -- it's an admin's headache. Filtering tools like killfiles and scorefiles for Usenet, and moderation for places like this, have been around for a while. Saturating a communications channel with noise in the way you describe just isn't feasible without the acquiescence of the other participants. If you choose not to ignore the spam and let it drive you away, well, that's your choice. I can tune out, erase, or ignore the spam, in most cases before it even hits my screen (killfiles ensure a big batch of Usenet spam is gone before I'm ever even aware of it).
Sure. You know what? It was super-valuable. Early exposure to the difference between the observable universe and a rose garden (or padded cell) is pretty damn crucial to developing emotional resilience.
It hurt, I cried, I was lonely. I grew up and got over it, and am way happier today than if I hadn't had a couple of emotional bruises to help me figure things out along the way.
And for another slant on the argument, the words of a judge are just words, but they do carry consequences.
Only because they're backed up by armed people. An arrest warrant is good for nothing except emergency toilet paper if the police refuse to execute it. Judicial words, like money, are symbolic and powerful only to the extent that the society around the symbol recognizes it (try spending sucres in your local 7-11 -- sucres will buy you a soda in Ecuador, but they're bumwad Stateside outside a bank that can turn them into a much smaller quantity of bux).
Did the spirit of the freedom to arm yourself refer to being able to own any weapon you want or to make sure that government would never again be able to dictate policy via the threat of armed force?
Um. I'm not sure if you realize this, but those two things are mutually dependent. The government cannot dictate policy by threatening armed force if and only if you and all your fellow citizens are able to own any weapon you want. Otherwise, the government has you outgunned and can dictate policy by threatening armed force. Duh.
Is it really this hard to believe that the Constitution means what it says it means?
Apologies to non-US/. readers, who are probably very tired of this already. Your forbearance is already giving the lie to Katz' article.
Yeah, and verbal abuse is just sound waves. They don't hurt people! Child porn and is just light reflected from a surface! It doesn't hurt people! Racist graffiti is just paint on a wall! etc, etc.
Exactly correct on all counts. A photograph of rape doesn't hurt the raped person; the rapist already did that. Graffiti hurts the property owner regardless of semantic content. Verbal abuse unsupported by physical restraints can be ignored or escaped rather trivially.
Of course people don't have a right, Deity-granted or otherwise, to expect other people to read the 'any old guff' they spout. But they do get to spout it.
You can say anything you like, but there's no guarantee of an audience.
That word, 'deconstructionalist.' I do not think it means what you think it means: see 'deconstruction' for more.
Taking responsibility for your own reaction to words is the very opposite of deconstructionism, called by reputable philosophers "...a false and horrible view, ripe with the seeds of tyranny."
It's interesting to watch Katz squander his credibility like this. He's an acceptably skilled, if florid, writer, but he keeps thinking he's got the chops to be a technology pundit, and he just doesn't. What he describes so far just doesn't correspond with observed reality -- I've worked at a number of tech startups, and the staff has always been 33 to 66 percent female, pretty evenly sprinkled throughout levels (I've had 2 male bosses in 10 jobs, and my boss' boss has been female at least half the time -- so much for the 'glass ceiling'). Plenty of women in my current department, both in tech-heavy (c coder, DBA, data modeler) and management positions. No 'unfriendly atmosphere,' no 'sexism.'
The flamey culture some online fora experience is probably related to some of the things Katz brings up -- young, poorly socialized men butting heads and dicksizing for intellectual dominance, enhanced by a low-accountability medium. But (a) It doesn't take as long to say as he takes, and (b) it's not as all-pervasive an atmosphere as he wants to make it out to be. Women geeks have plenty of resources, and are perfectly capable of (1) dishing it out as well as taking it or (2) ignoring it altogether or (3) going somewhere that doesn't have that kind of culture, like, for example, most of the freaking Net.
yeesh. talk about your mountains out of molehills.
you would still be a man--part of the dominating system.
Hang on there -- your unwarranted assumption almost cracked my windshield there. "Dominating system," my left foot. Outside of the victim-cult world of academia and possibly the highest of high-tech, sex equality has been reached in the USA, although the situation might be different elsewhere.
ever considered why hate crimes are different from other crimes?
Mostly it's to grant some people better legal protection than other people. So-called 'hate crimes' are a horrible devaluation of human rights in general: prosecuting a gay black man's murder more vigorously and with harsher penalties than a straight white man's murder makes it clear that the gay black man's life is more valuable, which devalues all human life as a result. Punishing the arson of a synagogue more stringently than the arson of a home cheapens the meaning of equality under the law.
Hate crime legislation sucks ass. It was illegal to beat and murder people and burn down their stuff already; there's no good reason not to enforce applicable existing law instead of passing new law making some people more worthy of protection than others.
Banner-ad targeting doesn't bug me -- Imagine, never having to see a banner ad for Korn or LimpBizkit again! Joy! OTOH, it's been a long-standing principle of mine never to give truthful information on any form unless there's a compelling reason (like you want your package to arrive at the correct address).
On the third hand, no invasion of privacy is necessary to compile a list of your likes/dislikes -- mp3.com can track the bands you like and the bands you hate without having your correct name/address/email. All they need is a unique identifier, like your login to the site -- you can feed them bogus demographic data (anyone tracking self-reported demographics should be shot before taking those data seriously anyway).
Once scientists begin cloning animal 'parts' for testing purposes, what's to stop them from growing human parts to use for testing.
Nothing, I hope. An endless supply of transplants would do a whole lot to end the suffering of people on transplant-wait lists, and might ameliorate the organlegging going on in places like India ($5K for a kidney).
Would Stephen Hawking have been deemed imperfect and terminated?
History check: Stephen Hawking was born a perfectly normal baby. He got ALS in his early twenties. Regardless, gene therapy (aided by oh, I don't know, fetal/cloning research?) will go a long way towards repairing lots of minor genetic defects in utero, and make a lot of the unrepairable stuff bearable/fixable post partum.
This 'race of perfect people' bs is a freaking pipe dream, people -- it assumes monolithic levels of organization in the human race, which there is zero evidence for. The Saudi Arabian parent-in-the-street's idea of perfection is quite different than the white suburban yuppie's version of same, not to mention the gay black yuppie's ideal offspring.
Cloning in particular, and biotech in general, is not, repeat not, going to result in some bizarre Xerox version of the human race where we all come off some 'perfect' template. Social, political, and market forces make it improbable to the point of absurdity.
British measurements come in troy and avoirdupois flavors. Yes, it's not complicated *enough*. Troy ounces are 12-to-the-pound, and avoirdupois are 16-to-the-pound. Or possibly the other way around; I can't be arsed to look this junk up. So 3.5 ounces are a shade under 1/3 pound if they're the 12-to-the-pound kind of ounces.
gomi
Re:Who are the monkeys doing these reviews?
on
The Sparrow
·
· Score: 2
I concur for the most part with your assessment of Heinlein (heresy, of course, for the older Slashdotters), but the only emotion Vonnegut is really familiar with is contempt. His disgust for humanity as a whole pervades his work, and makes it rather unreadable.
PKD I'm not that familiar with -- read the requisite Androids/Sheep, but High Castle and Albemuth read like he really, really needed his meds. It's rather odd that people are claiming it's not sf -- space travel and aliens aren't required for a story to be sf, but surely a story with those elements cannot be other than sf.
Of course, if by 'hard' SF people mean plot- and characterization- free techno-wankfests like everything Niven ever wrote, I suppose this isn't SF.
Nuts. "The Cable Guy" was definitely risky -- it failed, and the movie blew chunks, but it was definitely a gutsy move on Carrey's part. "The Truman Show" had many problems, foremost the cop-out ending, but Carrey's performace was strong there. "The Mask," of course, played directly into his talents and he shone there (and it remains Cameron Diaz' best flick barring "My Best Friend's Wedding" -- the woman cannot pull off lead roles to save her life).
Kaufman gloried in deliberate obscurantism, and committed the one unpardonable sin: deliberately boring the audience. He's an interesting biographical study, if only because he was so fucked in the head, but really -- Carrey's more entertaining.
And there are animals who REQUIRE old trees. Chopping down old forests and replacing them with all young trees might kill off these species too.
Sure. That's the point -- tree farming means old-growth forest isn't being chopped down for pulp. Not to mention alternate fiber sources such as (by now tiresome in its mention) hemp, or kenaf. Similar things apply to hardwoods, which are also farmed. Old-growth forest is less intensively logged now than it was 50 years ago. Greed itself leads there -- farmed wood has controlled growth circumstances, while natural-growth forest bends every which way and is more susceptible to disease, wildfire, and such. It makes better economic sense to farm wood rather than chop down old-growth forest, especially once you factor in the negative PR involved in logging old-growth stuff.
As far as Simon's book being rubbish.... We'll have to disagree on that. His analyses matches observed fact better than, say, Paul Ehrlich, whose persistence in preaching doom and envirochaos even after being proved wrong time and again marks him as a serious kook. And Simon is backed up by both physics and economics in his claims -- if you do a little digging and independently verify what he says, and what his detractors say, you might be surprised.
The long-run record shows that, every time supplies of something we previously thought necessary have grown scarce, one of the following things happen:
More of the stuff is found
Better use of existing stocks of the stuff is made
Some other stuff that does the job is found that is available in higher quantities
Any combination of the above
We've been about to run out of oil, for example, since the late 1800s. Gas prices are at an adjusted-dollar historic low.
We might run out of oil tomorrow. But I'm not going to bet on it.
Historically, when stocks of run low, prices rise, raising the incentive to find more , use more efficiently, or do without . This has happened for a great number of different resources, throughout history, repeatedly. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but I'll pick the historical record (especially over such a long period of time) over half-baked analyses every time.
Um. Manufacturing jobs have already moved overseas. And you know what? Good riddance to 'em. They're low paying and liable to disappear anyway, as automation takes over.
We have a finite number of trees,
Wrong. Trees do grow, you know. Most paper, f'rinstance, comes from farmed trees that were planted to be cut down.
a finite amount of oil and coal, a finite amount of iron, aluminum, titanium, and uranium.
These aren't finite in any meaningful, we're-about-to-run-out kind of way. If we were running out, prices would go up. They've been going down consistently over the long run. Inevitable conclusion: we're not running out. And we won't for a long time, if even 5% of total crustal abundance is extractable, nevermind things like:
Extraterrestrial mining for metals and chondrites
Alternate energy sources turn petroleum into mainly a raw material for plastics
It's not like these things are far off -- we'll have them by the turn of next century, and we're definitely not running out of crap by then, at any conceivable rate of use.
Hell even the amount of solar energy hitting the earth in a given day is finite (huge, but finite).
Sure. And the Sun has a finite lifespan. What's your point? These 'finite' limits are so far beyond our current and projected needs there's no reason to let doom-mongers set national priorities of 'conservation' that result in more scarcity than leaving things alone.
I have to point people, again, to Simon's The Ultimate Resource, where many of these issues of finite vs. infinite resources are addressed. Resources aren't limited in any way significant enough to affect policy decisions in the here-and-now, and won't be for the foreseeable future. The fundamental constraints on resources (energy and mass) abound throughout the solar system, and even if you confine yourself strictly to Earth, material sources have been, in the long run, becoming more and more abundant (as measured by price, the only really meaningful indicator), rather than less.
It's just sad that kids look at the TV and come away thinking that McDonalds is healthy, or that labelled clothes are somehow better-made, or that they are worthless if they don't have a mobile phone.
Yar. And it's just as sad that their parents let them do it.
Come on. If you don't like what TV exposes the little buggers to, don't let 'em watch it, or supervise their watching. It's not like they're being kidnapped at night and thrust into Clockwork Orange chairs while a continuous loop of advertising plays.
Parenting, and the education in Life that parents impart, is crucial -- blaming the corporations for poisoning the minds of your children is abdicating your role in raising them.
As Simon notes in Th e Ultimate Resource, the central truth of capitalism is that all voluntary exchanges create wealth. When I voluntarily give someone five bucks for a holofoil Charizard Pokemon card (I don't know how much the damn thing is going for these days, bear with me), I clearly want the holofoil Charizard more than I want the five bucks, or I would have kept my five bucks.
Contrariwise, the seller clearly wants the five bucks more than the card, or he/she/it wouldn't have parted with it. At the end of the exchange, we both have a greater percentage of our desires satisfied than we did before the exchange, and the exchange has therefore created wealth where none was before.
Violence, theft, and fraud circumvent the essential ingredient of 'voluntary' in 'voluntary exchange.' Involuntary exchanges don't create wealth, and monopolies remove a great deal of volition, since there are no alternate sources for what you want. These among the few legitimate places where government should interfere in the market -- the police take care of violence, theft, and fraud at the individual-citizen scale, and the SEC/DOJ do the same at the corporate-entity scale.
When they're doing their jobs, that is, which is more often than not, to set aside cynicism briefly.
Well, this is the same guy who praised the anti-intuitive, incredibly awkward 'hjkl' movement keys (yeah, I just *love* mapping orthogonal movement axes to a single line) over the completely intuitive arrow-keypad (gosh, the down key is on the bottom and the up key is on top! Amazing!).
I didn't get his ranting against chording, personally -- probably just vi bigotry again. Chording done right doesn't take any longer than a single keystroke. Not two years ago I could prepare WordPerfect docs hundreds of pages long and not have to touch the mouse more than twice or thrice a day (WP has a keyboard shortcut for everything, and unlike [gack] MSWord, lets you at the SGML-like codes).
This is invoking a logical falacy known as a false dilema. You're mistakenly (or at least baselessly) asserting that the universe's design is due to either intent or randomness, whereas there's nothing in your post to back up the notion that these are the only two options. It could be due to neither of those but instead due to some other option. Thus, even if you prove it's not due to randomness, this does not prove it's due to intent, or vice versa.
Hm. I can see where you'd think that. I have mis-stated what I meant. Logically, either X or (not X) is true, yes? Therefore, what I meant to say was that either the universe came about by intentional design or not, and I sloppily substituted 'randomness' for 'the converse of intentional design.'
To rephrase: I believe in God because I find it more comforting to believe the Universe came about by intentional design than to believe the converse. No false dilemma there, yes?
Excellent points on logical proof systems, by the way -- teach me to dash stuff off without thinking it through (it sounded a little funny when I wrote it, but heat of the moment, alas).
In the specific case of a well-defined God, however, I do maintain that for the more common definitions (omnipotent intelligent consciousness watching over human affairs, say), proving existence is simple -- define some evidence of Divine intervention/manifestation using some mutually agreeable definition of same, then collect evidence satisfying that definition. Proving non-existence is very slippery (absence of action can either mean non-existence or merely non-action, so it's inconclusive).
This depends on what you consider to be evidence. Although there is no proof, there are plenty of things out there that many would consider at least to be evidence for one position or the other.
Again, I have been imprecise. It would be more correct, perhaps, to say that the available evidence is sufficiently inconclusive towards either side that neither is really preferable.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference today is that the controlling group has female members. There is still a control of the majority by the minority
Hrm. I'd debate that you or I qualify for the 'majority' part of that sentence -- if there's an elite, we're it. Not that I feel bad about that at all. As for 'control,' citizens of Western (or well-Westernized) countries are significantly freer than citizens of less-developed or Eastern-bloc nations. US citizens in particular enjoy the greatest range of freedoms available in the world today. What threatens these freedoms is the ongoing abdication of personal responsibility. It's not my fault. The government should have stopped me. The government should have educated me. The government should have given me the tools to make a better person of myself. It's not my fault.
This refrain is heard over and over again. The voting public has discovered they can vote themselves money from the public till and the inevitable collapse of the governing system is happening all around us. If anything, there is less control now than ever before.
I understand a lot of men are really pissed off at being treated like the enemy for so long.
There is no enemy. There is no chamber of 12 old people getting together to Rule the World. There's just fallible old folks bumbling around, being greedy jerks and short-sighted fools, and sometimes (but not most of the time) evil.
If you have these types of conversations with women, about what their experience in the world as awoman is really like - you won't make silly comments like how women are equal now. Because I have a pile of experiences that you are unlikely to share...
A white woman walking down the street with her Latino sweetie is exposed to narstiness. A straight white man walking down the street is equally exposed to narstiness. The point is, we have reached equality -- we are all equally likely to be harassed by idiots. It's one of the liberating aspects of freedom -- gayfolk are as able, and as likely, to straightbash as straightfolk to gaybash. Freer, if anything -- I've caught gay friends making comments that would get them pilloried if the targets of the comments were anything other than white and straight.
It is by talking to each other, not assuming about each other, that we find out what we are like.
Right. That's what we're trying to do now. That's why your comments on the control of the majority by the minority are suspect -- unless you've talked to the members of the 'controlling minority' to know what they're like and what their plans are, it's foolish to say they control the majority (similarly undefined), or even to assume that it's a bad thing.
gomi
WTF? Of course you have the freedom to be mean. This isn't freaking Tele Tubby Land. Conversely, people have the freedom to get away from mean people and stop listening to them. Duh.
[hands you a small pamphlet entitled 'Learning to Cope']
gomi
On that whole porn v. erotica thing:
Erotica demands a higher level of cerebration than porn, which speaks more directly to the critter-brain (Og see sex! MMM, Og like sex!). Erotica usually tries to be artsy and include a plot and characters. Interacting with fiction, whether text or video, requires some degree of suspension of disbelief, identification with characters, and empathy, and these are all tasks that take CPU cycles away from from the hindbrain, which wants to go "Og see NAUGHTY BITZ! MMM!!"
And of course, a lot of modern erotica, like a lot of modern art, is Bad Art (self-involved delusional wanking) and hence inherently difficult to get aroused to/appreciate anyway.
Porn, on the other hand, is simple, visceral, and (in a good way) brutal. There's no tricky sauce, just aroused people doing what aroused people do with the intent to get the porn-observer aroused.
gomi
Subtle exclusionary behaviors are very easily (a) ignored, (b) unnoticed (because they're so subtle), and (c) gotten over.
I've never felt slighted by male-centered language such as 'guys' or the use of 'he,' much less excluded. Ascribing intentionality to a person's use of language ("he said 'he' to exclude me because I'm female! Waaah!") without examining the context of the statement ("anyone is welcome to say whatever he wants.") is silly Deconstructionist cant. If people say something, accept it at face value without poking around in their phrasing for subtle insult that isn't intended.
gomi
Well, it's not like he's the only one. Katz himself was the first to publish his experiences as part of a Spooky Evil Cyberspace Trend. And Katz' experiences just don't conform to observed reality. My experiences are a lot more in line with the poster's than Katz' -- more civility, rather than less. Anonymity doesn't necessarily mean freedom from accountability -- you can use the same pseudonym over a period of time, and that pseudonym gains its own credibility based on the messages it originates.
It's 'Jon,' by the way, not 'John.'
gomi
So you should change your email address when it gets so spammed that you can't use it anymore?
What happens when every email address is that way? When happens when every USENET forum is
that way? ALmost every communicaton o nthe internet that isn't somehow moderated is already
suffering from these problems.
Wow. That is just so not true. I read Usenet and post with my real email address. Neither my email address nor the Usenet groups I read are spammed above the point of 'negligible nuisance.' I get about 10 spam messages a day, which collectively take maybe 20 seconds to deal with. I spend more time waiting for red lights to turn green. Spam is just not a problem for the average end-user of the Internet these days -- it's an admin's headache. Filtering tools like killfiles and scorefiles for Usenet, and moderation for places like this, have been around for a while. Saturating a communications channel with noise in the way you describe just isn't feasible without the acquiescence of the other participants. If you choose not to ignore the spam and let it drive you away, well, that's your choice. I can tune out, erase, or ignore the spam, in most cases before it even hits my screen (killfiles ensure a big batch of Usenet spam is gone before I'm ever even aware of it).
gomi
Did you ever get bullied as a kid? Did it hurt?
Sure. You know what? It was super-valuable. Early exposure to the difference between the observable universe and a rose garden (or padded cell) is pretty damn crucial to developing emotional resilience.
It hurt, I cried, I was lonely. I grew up and got over it, and am way happier today than if I hadn't had a couple of emotional bruises to help me figure things out along the way.
And for another slant on the argument, the words of a judge are just words, but they do carry consequences.
Only because they're backed up by armed people. An arrest warrant is good for nothing except emergency toilet paper if the police refuse to execute it. Judicial words, like money, are symbolic and powerful only to the extent that the society around the symbol recognizes it (try spending sucres in your local 7-11 -- sucres will buy you a soda in Ecuador, but they're bumwad Stateside outside a bank that can turn them into a much smaller quantity of bux).
gomi
Did the spirit of the freedom to arm yourself refer to being able to own any weapon you want or to make sure that government would never again be able to dictate policy via the threat of armed force?
/. readers, who are probably very tired of this already. Your forbearance is already giving the lie to Katz' article.
Um. I'm not sure if you realize this, but those two things are mutually dependent. The government cannot dictate policy by threatening armed force if and only if you and all your fellow citizens are able to own any weapon you want. Otherwise, the government has you outgunned and can dictate policy by threatening armed force. Duh.
Is it really this hard to believe that the Constitution means what it says it means?
Apologies to non-US
gomi
Yeah, and verbal abuse is just sound waves. They don't hurt people! Child porn and is just light reflected from a surface! It doesn't hurt people! Racist graffiti is just paint on a wall! etc, etc.
Exactly correct on all counts. A photograph of rape doesn't hurt the raped person; the rapist already did that. Graffiti hurts the property owner regardless of semantic content. Verbal abuse unsupported by physical restraints can be ignored or escaped rather trivially.
Of course people don't have a right, Deity-granted or otherwise, to expect other people to read the 'any old guff' they spout. But they do get to spout it.
You can say anything you like, but there's no guarantee of an audience.
That word, 'deconstructionalist.' I do not think it means what you think it means: see 'deconstruction' for more.
Taking responsibility for your own reaction to words is the very opposite of deconstructionism, called by reputable philosophers "...a false and horrible view, ripe with the seeds of tyranny."
gomi
It's interesting to watch Katz squander his credibility like this. He's an acceptably skilled, if florid, writer, but he keeps thinking he's got the chops to be a technology pundit, and he just doesn't. What he describes so far just doesn't correspond with observed reality -- I've worked at a number of tech startups, and the staff has always been 33 to 66 percent female, pretty evenly sprinkled throughout levels (I've had 2 male bosses in 10 jobs, and my boss' boss has been female at least half the time -- so much for the 'glass ceiling'). Plenty of women in my current department, both in tech-heavy (c coder, DBA, data modeler) and management positions. No 'unfriendly atmosphere,' no 'sexism.'
The flamey culture some online fora experience is probably related to some of the things Katz brings up -- young, poorly socialized men butting heads and dicksizing for intellectual dominance, enhanced by a low-accountability medium. But (a) It doesn't take as long to say as he takes, and (b) it's not as all-pervasive an atmosphere as he wants to make it out to be. Women geeks have plenty of resources, and are perfectly capable of (1) dishing it out as well as taking it or (2) ignoring it altogether or (3) going somewhere that doesn't have that kind of culture, like, for example, most of the freaking Net.
yeesh. talk about your mountains out of molehills.
gomi
you would still be a man--part of the dominating system.
Hang on there -- your unwarranted assumption almost cracked my windshield there. "Dominating system," my left foot. Outside of the victim-cult world of academia and possibly the highest of high-tech, sex equality has been reached in the USA, although the situation might be different elsewhere.
ever considered why hate crimes are different from other crimes?
Mostly it's to grant some people better legal protection than other people. So-called 'hate crimes' are a horrible devaluation of human rights in general: prosecuting a gay black man's murder more vigorously and with harsher penalties than a straight white man's murder makes it clear that the gay black man's life is more valuable, which devalues all human life as a result. Punishing the arson of a synagogue more stringently than the arson of a home cheapens the meaning of equality under the law.
Hate crime legislation sucks ass. It was illegal to beat and murder people and burn down their stuff already; there's no good reason not to enforce applicable existing law instead of passing new law making some people more worthy of protection than others.
gomi
Banner-ad targeting doesn't bug me -- Imagine, never having to see a banner ad for Korn or LimpBizkit again! Joy! OTOH, it's been a long-standing principle of mine never to give truthful information on any form unless there's a compelling reason (like you want your package to arrive at the correct address).
On the third hand, no invasion of privacy is necessary to compile a list of your likes/dislikes -- mp3.com can track the bands you like and the bands you hate without having your correct name/address/email. All they need is a unique identifier, like your login to the site -- you can feed them bogus demographic data (anyone tracking self-reported demographics should be shot before taking those data seriously anyway).
gomi
Laibach and PWEI are pretty mainstream compared to, say, Los Prisioneros (Chilean 80's prog-rock, a bit whiny in parts but good fun anyway)
gomi
Once scientists begin cloning animal 'parts' for testing purposes, what's to stop them from growing human parts to use for testing.
Nothing, I hope. An endless supply of transplants would do a whole lot to end the suffering of people on transplant-wait lists, and might ameliorate the organlegging going on in places like India ($5K for a kidney).
Would Stephen Hawking have been deemed imperfect and terminated?
History check: Stephen Hawking was born a perfectly normal baby. He got ALS in his early twenties. Regardless, gene therapy (aided by oh, I don't know, fetal/cloning research?) will go a long way towards repairing lots of minor genetic defects in utero, and make a lot of the unrepairable stuff bearable/fixable post partum.
This 'race of perfect people' bs is a freaking pipe dream, people -- it assumes monolithic levels of organization in the human race, which there is zero evidence for. The Saudi Arabian parent-in-the-street's idea of perfection is quite different than the white suburban yuppie's version of same, not to mention the gay black yuppie's ideal offspring.
Cloning in particular, and biotech in general, is not, repeat not, going to result in some bizarre Xerox version of the human race where we all come off some 'perfect' template. Social, political, and market forces make it improbable to the point of absurdity.
gomi
British measurements come in troy and avoirdupois flavors. Yes, it's not complicated *enough*.
Troy ounces are 12-to-the-pound, and avoirdupois are 16-to-the-pound. Or possibly the other way around; I can't be arsed to look this junk up.
So 3.5 ounces are a shade under 1/3 pound if they're the 12-to-the-pound kind of ounces.
gomi
I concur for the most part with your assessment of Heinlein (heresy, of course, for the older Slashdotters), but the only emotion Vonnegut is really familiar with is contempt. His disgust for humanity as a whole pervades his work, and makes it rather unreadable.
PKD I'm not that familiar with -- read the requisite Androids/Sheep, but High Castle and Albemuth read like he really, really needed his meds. It's rather odd that people are claiming it's not sf -- space travel and aliens aren't required for a story to be sf, but surely a story with those elements cannot be other than sf.
Of course, if by 'hard' SF people mean plot- and characterization- free techno-wankfests like everything Niven ever wrote, I suppose this isn't SF.
gomi
Nuts. "The Cable Guy" was definitely risky -- it
failed, and the movie blew chunks, but it was definitely a gutsy move on Carrey's part. "The Truman Show" had many problems, foremost the cop-out ending, but Carrey's performace was strong there. "The Mask," of course, played directly into his talents and he shone there (and it remains Cameron Diaz' best flick barring "My Best Friend's Wedding" -- the woman cannot pull off lead roles to save her life).
Kaufman gloried in deliberate obscurantism, and committed the one unpardonable sin: deliberately boring the audience. He's an interesting biographical study, if only because he was so fucked in the head, but really -- Carrey's more entertaining.
gomi
Sure. That's the point -- tree farming means old-growth forest isn't being chopped down for pulp. Not to mention alternate fiber sources such as (by now tiresome in its mention) hemp, or kenaf. Similar things apply to hardwoods, which are also farmed. Old-growth forest is less intensively logged now than it was 50 years ago. Greed itself leads there -- farmed wood has controlled growth circumstances, while natural-growth forest bends every which way and is more susceptible to disease, wildfire, and such. It makes better economic sense to farm wood rather than chop down old-growth forest, especially once you factor in the negative PR involved in logging old-growth stuff.
As far as Simon's book being rubbish.... We'll have to disagree on that. His analyses matches observed fact better than, say, Paul Ehrlich, whose persistence in preaching doom and envirochaos even after being proved wrong time and again marks him as a serious kook. And Simon is backed up by both physics and economics in his claims -- if you do a little digging and independently verify what he says, and what his detractors say, you might be surprised.
The long-run record shows that, every time supplies of something we previously thought necessary have grown scarce, one of the following things happen:
We've been about to run out of oil, for example,
since the late 1800s. Gas prices are at an adjusted-dollar historic low.
We might run out of oil tomorrow. But I'm not going to bet on it.
Historically, when stocks of run low, prices rise, raising the incentive to find more , use more efficiently, or do without . This has happened for a great number of different resources, throughout history, repeatedly. Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but I'll pick the historical record (especially over such a long period of time) over half-baked analyses every time.
gomi
Well, you settle back into them cushions. I hear the hooks don't bite quite so much into your eyelids if you relax.
I'll be in the next room, trying to find the projector.
gomi
We have a finite number of trees,
Wrong. Trees do grow, you know. Most paper, f'rinstance, comes from farmed trees that were planted to be cut down.
a finite amount of oil and coal, a finite amount of iron, aluminum, titanium, and uranium.
These aren't finite in any meaningful, we're-about-to-run-out kind of way. If we were running out, prices would go up. They've been going down consistently over the long run. Inevitable conclusion: we're not running out. And we won't for a long time, if even 5% of total crustal abundance is extractable, nevermind things like:
It's not like these things are far off -- we'll have them by the turn of next century, and we're definitely not running out of crap by then, at any conceivable rate of use.
Hell even the amount of solar energy hitting the earth in a given day is finite (huge, but finite).
Sure. And the Sun has a finite lifespan. What's your point? These 'finite' limits are so far beyond our current and projected needs there's no reason to let doom-mongers set national priorities of 'conservation' that result in more scarcity than leaving things alone.
gomi
I have to point people, again, to Simon's The Ultimate Resource, where many of these issues of finite vs. infinite resources are addressed. Resources aren't limited in any way significant enough to affect policy decisions in the here-and-now, and won't be for the foreseeable future. The fundamental constraints on resources (energy and mass) abound throughout the solar system, and even if you confine yourself strictly to Earth, material sources have been, in the long run, becoming more and more abundant (as measured by price, the only really meaningful indicator), rather than less.
gomi
Yar. And it's just as sad that their parents let them do it.
Come on. If you don't like what TV exposes the little buggers to, don't let 'em watch it, or supervise their watching. It's not like they're being kidnapped at night and thrust into Clockwork Orange chairs while a continuous loop of advertising plays.
Parenting, and the education in Life that parents impart, is crucial -- blaming the corporations for poisoning the minds of your children is abdicating your role in raising them.
gomi
Contrariwise, the seller clearly wants the five bucks more than the card, or he/she/it wouldn't have parted with it. At the end of the exchange, we both have a greater percentage of our desires satisfied than we did before the exchange, and the exchange has therefore created wealth where none was before.
Violence, theft, and fraud circumvent the essential ingredient of 'voluntary' in 'voluntary exchange.' Involuntary exchanges don't create wealth, and monopolies remove a great deal of volition, since there are no alternate sources for what you want. These among the few legitimate places where government should interfere in the market -- the police take care of violence, theft, and fraud at the individual-citizen scale, and the SEC/DOJ do the same at the corporate-entity scale.
When they're doing their jobs, that is, which is more often than not, to set aside cynicism briefly.
gomi
Well, this is the same guy who praised the anti-intuitive, incredibly awkward 'hjkl' movement keys (yeah, I just *love* mapping orthogonal movement axes to a single line) over the completely intuitive arrow-keypad (gosh, the down key is on the bottom and the up key is on top! Amazing!).
I didn't get his ranting against chording, personally -- probably just vi bigotry again. Chording done right doesn't take any longer than a single keystroke. Not two years ago I could prepare WordPerfect docs hundreds of pages long and not have to touch the mouse more than twice or thrice a day (WP has a keyboard shortcut for everything, and unlike [gack] MSWord, lets you at the SGML-like codes).
gomi
This is invoking a logical falacy known as a false dilema. You're mistakenly (or at least baselessly) asserting that the universe's
design is due to either intent or randomness, whereas there's nothing in your post to back up the notion that these are the only
two options. It could be due to neither of those but instead due to some other option. Thus, even if you prove it's not due to
randomness, this does not prove it's due to intent, or vice versa.
Hm. I can see where you'd think that. I have mis-stated what I meant. Logically, either X or (not X) is true, yes? Therefore, what I meant to say was that either the universe came about by intentional design or not, and I sloppily substituted 'randomness' for 'the converse of intentional design.'
To rephrase: I believe in God because I find it more comforting to believe the Universe came about by intentional design than to believe the converse. No false dilemma there, yes?
Excellent points on logical proof systems, by the way -- teach me to dash stuff off without thinking it through (it sounded a little funny when I wrote it, but heat of the moment, alas).
In the specific case of a well-defined God, however, I do maintain that for the more common definitions (omnipotent intelligent consciousness watching over human affairs, say), proving existence is simple -- define some evidence of Divine intervention/manifestation using some mutually agreeable definition of same, then collect evidence satisfying that definition.
Proving non-existence is very slippery (absence of action can either mean non-existence or merely non-action, so it's inconclusive).
This depends on what you consider to be evidence. Although there is no proof, there are plenty of things out there that many
would consider at least to be evidence for one position or the other.
Again, I have been imprecise. It would be more correct, perhaps, to say that the available evidence is sufficiently inconclusive towards either side that neither is really preferable.
Cheers,
gomi