...but seriously: isn't this going to make a lot of TV unprofitable? So what happens now? Will less TV be made?...
Oh, the horrors! Less TV?!?
If TV can't adapt to a new advertising model, or a new business model altogether, then it should die. The current model is based on advertisers shelling out huge coin to pay for audiences that the networks aren't really delivering. Take a look at the Nielson ratings; by any scientific standard those are completely bogus measures of the audience. They asked me to help them for a month, I didn't respond, they left me alone... hmm, does there seem to be a problem with their selection of data? A little less American Experience that month in their records. The networks and the advertizers have been willing to live in that let's-pretend-they're-real-numbers dream, but they're about to wake up.
The monolithic networks will take this very hard, and they're likely not going to survive this change. The general audience they aim for just won't be there. It's been eroding forever, but once the advertising model frays a bit, that sucker's going to split wide open.
if the only money was in the DVD release, why do TV at all?
Actually you imagine an acceptable alternative. Sounds a lot like other point-to-point models, or somewhat like HBO's approach to TV, which has gotten a lot of good press lately. People buy those shows on DVD, and buy them avidly.
Personally I'd imagine a future in which corporations go back to actually producing soecific shows because the target demographic works for them. "Beauty and the Beast" would have various "women's products" as sponsors, for example. Shows like that (not that I ever even saw B & the B) are a good example of how the current system fails; that won its slot amongst adult women, but it didn't attract that audience the networks want, cutting across demographics. In the real world, at least for anyone with the $8-a-month cable I buy, that world doesn't exist any more anyway.
I'm no audiophile, but the Belkin product has been sitting in my glove box for months now because it suffers from too much interference. Nothing's clear, consistent, and strong to listen to, the signal fades in and out constantly. The Tunecast's switch only allows three bands to broadcast from, and in my area they're all overwhelmed by the signal from a jazz/traffic station.
Griffin makes an "iTrip" that lets you choose from many more spots on the dial, and that seemed promising but I didn't want to blow another forty bucks. Easier just to wire it into the stereo using AV jacks or whatever, or get a tape adapter if you've still got a cassette deck. Just feels passe, though.
(You'd think stereo manufacturers would be all over this, but for some reason they're way behind the curve. The parent post's question is so obvious...)
The ONLY reason these people do what they do is because they have no army and they BELIEVE that Allah will love and cherish them in the afterlife.
Well, hardly true. There are lots more people just in the Muslim world, to limit the argument to the people you're talking about, who have the same basic value for Allah's good graces, but who don't do this. They may even agree with the aims of the "martyrs" (ugh) involved, but they don't hold with the tactic. It's a complicated world.
If you ask me this has a hell (and I use that word carefully) of a lot more to do with how fundamentalist beliefs interact with the world around them than it does with any particularly Muslim value system. You can easily find examples of comparable acts in history by those of other faiths, can't you? Not so much in a modern terrorist sense, but suicide attacks are hardly new. Nor is murder on a massive scale being justified by religion; take a long read in the old testament sometime. Read something about the crusades.
Either way, the kids blowing themselves up are doing it for complicated reasons, and they're not always easy connections to understand. Mohammed Atta was apparently obsessed with modern skyscrapers being inherently at odds with the true Muslim life, for one example.
This weekend I went to a cheerful, well-acted, totally commercial romantic comedy with 8,000 characters and less than one writer. It was a complete mediocrity, something like the best Love Boat episode you ever saw, and included maybe the most obvious product placement I've seen lately.
At least Italian Job built the Minis into the plot. In this movie they interrupted a chase scene that was arguably the only action sequence in order to let one of the characters stand between two "New iMac" posters for about five dead seconds of screen time. Totally pointless, and how cheap do you need to be? I mean, have the actual computers do something, don't just stand up a couple of posters. Awfully lame. And if it wants to be subliminal, they need not to pause for five beats, the idiots...
i'll admit the possibilities are scary, but you've gotta have some faith in your government. especially with a matter that is temporary (remember, pat act has an expiration date).
We're talking about an administration that's asserted its right to lock American citizens up without due process and keep them imprisoned indefinitely with no charges and no representation. 'Cause, you know, they're the bad guys.
Even Ashcroft's dismissing those concerned librarians was astonishingly arrogant and did everything possible to irritate me. No, you don't care about what I'm reading... except you do care, enough to give yourself the ability to look at it without a warrant on the grounds of national security, right? The disdain for the concerns of a bunch of librarians -- who, you know, do kind of give a crap about intellectual freedoms -- couldn't speak more clearly about where this guy is coming from. When librarians care more about the Bill of Rights than the U.S. Attorney General, what does that say to you?
Add to that the more superficially nuts sides of Ashcroft -- having himself "anointed" by Clarence Thomas when he took office, writing and performing his own patriotic songs (and twisting his staff's arms to sing along at his morning meetings), covering the breast of the statue of justice because he didn't like it over his shoulder at press conferences.... I fundamentally do not trust this guy to do the measured, moderate thing by his country. He believes he's on a sort of Christian crusade in government, and I'm not at all confident he'd put the constitution above that end.
So no, this is not a person or an administration whom I "have to have some faith" in. I'd have been much more inclined to allow a moderate administration -- someone like Eisenhower, say -- this sort of encroachment on our rights. Even then it's the wrong path to go down, and it should cause serious introspection on our part to see our government going there.
Which is sort of what you're doing, no offense. Turning this one into a pro-spanking tirade is missing the point and creating a little spat off to the side.
What we need to do isn't scold parents for not spanking their kids. We just need to encourage families to spend time together, it's that simple. When you have time together, the kids will pick up on the values you believe in -- partly because you play the whole parental role and instruct (and sometimes scold) them, but more importantly because they'll see how you act yourself. There are tons of ways that'll come out, lots of different flavors to it. You're into this spanking thing; well, whatever, but at least be there with them, you know?
Personally I don't always blame the parents. Partly this is economic -- two working parents on the same schedule has become the norm in order to keep up our SUV insurance payments, and that means kids just plain have less time with the adults who really do care about them. Scolding a single mother for not spanking her kids more is just not going to help anyone. On the other hand, if her work gave her flex time, for example, that might help. Your "Parents are to blame" angle would probably shut that option down.
But back to the games thing: I like computer games, play them with the kids or with the kids watching often enough, and I'm darn certain they understand the distinction between fantasy and reality there. On the other hand I've run into two-year-olds who couldn't talk except in snippets from video games. Not enough parents in that life, too much games in isolation. That's the difference.
"Much of the Christian Right demands all-out U.S. support for Israel, not for reasons of national interest, but for allegedly Biblical reasons: they hope the battle of Armageddon, forecast in the Book of Revelation, will soon erupt in the Middle East, and they want the U.S. Government to help bring it about by backing Israel..." -- Joseph Sobran
This isn't just crackpot ideas people have about black helicopters (that being my Southern Baptist relations' big one) or whatever; it is informing, helping to shape, U.S. Foreign Policy. Think Bush's backing of Sharon has nothing to do with Revelation? It isn't just the Middle East, either. Reagan used to say stuff about living in the "end times." 'Cause, you know, he was fighting that 'evil empire,' you know?
Or take a look at the "Left Behind" series of novels. Best sellers in the U.S.
I had a girl sit in front of me in a creative writing class who told me her plan was to have children soon -- but to schedule them so the apocalypse would come just before they became adolescents. No unruly teenagers -- all thanks to the "end time," again.
These people, or a healthy percentage of them that amounts to millions of Americans anyway, are positively pining for the Apocalypse. Their internal lives can largely involve fantasizing about the end. Without going out of my way in a fairly "liberal" state (Minnesota), I've run into my share.
Apparently the RIAA claims to represent thousands of labels, many of whom have never joined the organization.
Sort of reminiscent of the presence of nations on Powell's "coalition of the willing" list who had no idea they were going to be there. The Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, for example, expressed surprise that Powell had included his nation, and said he had no idea why they were on the list.
The indy labels are playing the role of the Solomon Islands, here -- having their name put to something they don't necessarily believe in as a way of strongarming the impression that the RIAA truly represents their industry. It's a strategy aimed at members of congress who're already inclined to believe the RIAA's arguments. In the same way the "willing" thing was meant to convince the U.S. population, or just enough to matter, anyway -- it didn't make any dent at all in world opinion, because everyone knew Bush et al were just trumping up as big a list as they could get to bolster their shaky legitimacy.
Having seen Blade Runner in the theater originally -- my birthday as a teenager -- and Minority Report last winter, I can say Two Towers was about equal to them in my book. Among the three I'd say Towers held its own as a movie's movie best, but Blade Runner has staying power because it's a measure, a measure, more original and it has a slightly more mature heart to it.
Blade Runner largely gets people cranked with its production values. The whole "Why am I here? Why is Rutger Hauer such a tragic figure?" philosophizing side of it fell flat for me even back then in the almost empty theater. We didn't exactly leave the movie talking about the original issues it brought up, and I was, what, young enough not to drive yet... For Harrison Ford it's nowhere near as complete and convincing a performance as Mosquito Coast. The lame narration it was released with, the happy ending thing... It's a cool movie to look at, I guess, but muddled by studio interference and not high on my list of movies to watch again sometime.
Minority Report was maybe the biggest mess I've seen in ten years. The entire Warner Brothers "factory fight" sequence just made me wince, again and again. (One kept hearing that WB music, even -- dump dump dump dump DUMP dump dump dump...) Max von Sydow was no surprise at all, the plotline involving how he avoided detection in the original murder made precisely zero sense (he knows where "the camera" will be for these psychics?), and so on. The movie was maybe a half-hour long, partly owing to the tooo looooong homage to Blade Runner involving the whole eye transplant thing. We left that theater saying Spielberg had overproduced his material in a big way but never answered "What if he kills people inadvertently while he's running away this way?" Pretty basic plot question, you know? It deserved awards for production design and nothing else.
And you're right, the whole "shield surfing" thing and especially the Dwarf jokes got very old in Two Towers... almost as old as the incredibly tedious Tolkienesque declarative language. ("And so.... it begins...") The "Gollum debates himself" scene produced unintentional laughter in both theaters I saw it in. But, you know, I get bashed as a movie snob -- The Third Man, Citizen Kane, the Big Sleep -- and I could bring myself to see Towers a second time, despite all the screaming orcs and so on. The first movie was better, but Towers was okay by me. Not great, but pretty good for what it was.
No, "they" don't call themselves the "N" word "all day long." I can't remember hearing anyone identify herself in that way in, say, the last ten years. Before that it's possible, I guess. Hey, my memory's not perfect. I've never, ever, heard "cracker." (Closest to discrimination I've felt was when the Native American guy asked me for change and was incredulous that I was walking because I didn't have money for the bus.)
But yeah, it seems to happen on Def Comedy Jam, so you're obviously in touch with how black people think. Go you.
Spare clue I had around: It's okay to make self-deprecating remarks about yourself, but when you do it to other people they often don't take it very well. When a gay friend of mine says something, ruefully, about other gay men, that's okay. I don't have get the same allowance when it comes to talking about gay men. I'm not a gay man. So, you know, um... duh.
Look, the fact is there are people at the polls who are there to HELP! If you can't figure out a ballot, too bad! You're too proud to ask for help? C'Mon.
Did you read any news sources about what happened in, oh, Florida, a few years back? Remember people who said their ballots had been "spoiled" but who were told they couldn't have another by officious poll workers? Remember the charges that the cops were out intimidating voters, that they ran roadblocks in certain neighborhoods on election day? Remember the stories about incompetent poll workers not instructing people in how to use the ballot? Does any of this sound at all familiar?
You ask us why people might feel intimidated from asking for help? In a state where thousands of voters were "mistakenly" purged from the rolls because they were "mistaken" for felons? "C'mon" right back atcha.
frankly I'd rather count every vote as is then try to "determine voter intent." Especially if the voter doesn't take the time to learn the system.
Again, did you read the stories from 2000? "As is" doesn't cover a situation where a hole seems to have been punched out, but the little "chad" is clinging to the back of the card. What does "as is" mean on that vote? It ain't that simple. We all wish it was, but it isn't.
The biggest habitat on earth is the ocean's "mid water," below where light can penetrate and above the abyssal depths. When biologists go down for a look there, they're trying to observe from a blind that's totally conspicuous, noisy, and thrashing around a ton. Even the latest scientific robot submersibles are pretty noisy hydraulic monstrosities -- the Monterey Bay Acquatic Research Institute's being decent examples.
Still, even in Monterey Bay, MBARI has seen all kinds of new siphonophores (look halfway down) and so on -- really amazing animals that may be the biggest group of predators on earth, but that we know next to nothing about.
A low-speed, quiet, long-term observation platform would be made to order for, to use that example, siphonophores: they're slow-moving, they hunt by drifting along extending toxic tentacles, but they're often disturbed by the existing robot subs. Or set this thing to watching a whale carcass as it floats around: scientists have a lot of ideas about the roles dead whales may play, but no way of really observing them long-term.
The lack of speed isn't going to let you follow something like squid around; teuthids have a much better water jet system that'll let them outrun and outmaneuver almost anything we've got. But this'd give us a nice, quiet observation platform for most of the stuff that lives midwater and drifts -- which seems to be a huge share of the life on earth, and almost unexplored by science.
In general I don't have much sympathy for RSI sufferers. (I was going to put sufferers in quotes, but thought better of it:-).
You're right that these "gestures" we're talking about do sound like exactly what the medical literature says causes RSI problems. Wrist-turning moves, over and over, are the basic cause of computer-related RSIs.
But your sample of one is a crock when it comes to dismissing everyone who has pain from this. Extremely useful "knowledge," that -- except all it does is arm you to dismiss other people and feel smug about not having been unlucky yourself. I used to work in bookstores in college, and some of the older clerks had RSI pain from shelving. Not something they were privileged to avoid in their jobs.
To think people are submitting articles to JAMA (003 Jun 11;289(22):2963-9 -- "Computer use and carpal tunnel syndrome: a 1-year follow-up study") trying to figure out whether carpal tunnel is associated with keyboards or mice or a combination. All we had to do was ask you and you could tell us it was a matter of being "reasonably careful." (Note -- those are quotes.)
Hey, guess what that study (and others) have indicated? It's mouse use, not the keyboard, that seems to be a main culprit. RSIs from computer use are almost always related to wrist movement. Trackballs (with a wrist rest especially) seem to be less problematic. Hmm, maybe we could use this information to prevent other people from undergoing a lot of pain, encourage trackballs instead... Oh, sorry, we don't have any sympathy for those people, 'cause they injure themselves out of a lack of common sense. No need to publish medical recommendations to guide businesses in their purchasing, for example. Morons. Let 'em "suffer."
Suppose you accidentally drive over a pedestrian. Your civil suit fines will be much higher if you maim the person instead of kill him because you're paying for pain & suffering to cover the rest of his life.
Evidence for this claim, please? I'm honestly curious to know whether it's true.
My point? Even for people who keep their computers forever, even for old retired folks who only check their email on Sunday, even for the iMac's target demographic, the iMac doesn't make sense.
Your argument is plausible in the abstract, but doesn't match up with the experience of anyone I know. PC monitors ten years ago, leave alone the twenty you're saying should work, were utter crap compared with the one on the iMac today. Following your logic, you would currently be sitting in front of a 20" CGA behemoth that cost you a serious bundle -- and I'm only using that example because the monitors we had in 1983 were designed for Commodore 64s and wouldn't function with your four-year-old computer. You just told me I should have bought the best possible monitor back then and migrated it to each new computer. Um, no thank you?
But I'm sure you have many examples. Please, provide them.
I assume the "... wait..." at the end there was when you went and actually read the story? The fact that/. frames it that way doesn't mean Dayton is saying "We should tax e-mail." The idiotic version in quotes there is a straw man made up for the edification of slashdot, with a little boost from the Star Tribune's editor.
Want a politician who actually hears what people are saying to him and tries to problem-solve about it with a certain amount of candor? Here's your guy. ("Weasel words" are not usually how you'd describe a politician who says he'd consider a new tax but the approach doesn't seem practical.) The article's slant is obvious, but underneath that you see a range of possible approaches to the SPAM problem -- and various members of congress saying they're skeptical about how any of them would work, just like you seem to be.
Except, of course, you haven't heard all the testimony on the subject they have. You haven't even read the article.
I guess you'd like someone who'll cover his butt so that he's never misrepresented, instead. Maybe you'd be interested in someone who "talks tough" about taxes but shows the fiscal responsibility of my ten-year-olds with a Discover card? Maybe (s)he'll even mention this in campaign ads: "Mark Dayton wants to tax everything. Death. E-mail... He wants to tax the whole world..." (I know, that last bit's the sort of peurile hyperbole you see in campaign ads all the time... but you just made it, didn't you?)
To imply similarity, make the graph larger than it needs to be. Then all of your points will fall in a narrow range and appear closer together.
Looks like the zebra finch data set was small, pushing the top of the y axis to three times the top Strouhal number for anything on it. I'd call this clumsy more than misleading, but you're right -- it does conveniently push everything down to the bottom, doesn't it? The whole "narrowness of the band" line of argument fits that a little too well...
A classic case where an editor's instincts on this point might lead newspapers to deliberately mislead the reader would be the stock market. When the market's at 10,000 (arbitrary example), to make a graph in which the y axis runs from 9,500 to 10,200 artificially exaggerates changes over time. (Oh my God! The market's down 80 points today! Which is to say, it's down just under 1 percent...) Graphs describing the stock market mostly show a tiny share of the market, the top 5% or 10% of the overall value, with steep rises and drops within a single week. Misleading, and sensationalistic.
Don't let's get started on "government spending" graphs, either...
If I didn't have 911, I could just as easily tape a list of important numbers to my phone
Let's hope when you hear your neighbor shouting "Oh God he isn't breathing" from the street at 2:17 AM, you can be calm enough to walk into the other room to find the one phone you taped this set of numbers on -- and you haven't worn the numbers off in your daily use so that you can't read them in the dim light without the glasses you can't find. When I heard that voice, I was damn glad it was just 911.
911 is the magical number you call and theoretically you're supposed to get help. In reality, they just send over a man with a gun who's got more emotional baggage and a bigger chip on his shoulder than you do.
(Thankfully I'm not living in an inner city situation, so the paramedics came right quick. The guy didn't live, though. Heart attack.)
Go do a google for "Diebold" and "Republican." Browse a bit. Sample result:
"Wally O'Dell, CEO of Diebold Inc., this week sent out letters to central Ohio Republicans asking them to raise $10,000 in donations in time for a Sept. 26 Ohio Republican Party event at his home." -- Port Clinton News Herald
Wally O'Dell has sworn to deliver Ohio's electoral votes for G.W. next year. That's well beyond the level of the generality you've just expressed.
And no, companies and industries don't give money equally. In some industries they do, in some there's a much more slanted bias. Think the energy industry's giving money to Howard Dean much? Trial lawyers give money to Democrats. HMOs give money to Republicans. For some mysterious reason, there's a very real Republican slant among these vote-counting companies. We're not talking about them covering their bases both ways, we're talking about openly advocating for one party while selling machines that count votes.
Weird, I live in Minnesota and never had this problem. Dirty heads kill tons of tapes, but they were surprisingly durable in the cold. Occasionally you'd get a groggy, slurred moment or two starting something up...
Maybe at -20, I was just too freaking cold to listen to music.
This is only for movies that haven't yet been released. Your copy of Matrix won't land in the slammer, but your prerelease screener for RotK will.
The utter absurdity of this distinction only makes me more steamed over it, not less. Why do you suppose there's a fundamental difference between these two behaviors? Apparently there's a difference, in degree, between sharing movies that haven't been released and sharing ones that have -- a difference so great that if you share your pre-release copy you should be punished like a criminal for a civil offense.
This isn't a bill about the public interest, it's a bill about corporate interests being allowed to install criminal punishments according to how threatened they feel by a behavior. The entire line of thinking is completly wrongheaded, and the punishments are patently disproportionate to the crime. That's the hallmark of a justice system that isn't working. When the punishment's seriously disproportionate to the crime, something is terribly wrong.
(Take a look at three-strikes drug penalties, and you'll have another example. Caught with a joint three times? Do hard time.)
Since before the demise of the Dreamcast, NBA2k[-2-3] has been well better than the EA NABLive series.
EA's play testers must not even watch real ball. This year's new version, judging by the reviews, lets you make either layups or three, but there's next to no middle jumper game at all. Serious play balance problems.
The Sega series also has had better "franchise" modes, though those break down in any game after a couple of seasons, either way.
which is more important, tourist dollars or the truth?"
Our country is littered with "historical" markers that bear only the faintest resemblances to the events they supposedly commemorate. These Billy the Kid graves are just a tiny spur of that iceberg. History is in the thrall of local chambers of commerce. Think they want to tell a story that isn't favorable to their area?
The number of museums to Custer that are out there is an okay example of when it's just innocent squabbling, not a total whitewash. There are collections of Custer memorabilia scattered from Michigan to North Dakota (and of course Montana), and they're all bitterly opposed to giving up a scrap from his leather belt. It's a matter of tourism and civic pride. Want to see the definitive Custer exhibit? Get ready to spend a summer.
That's when it isn't the obviously censored version. James Loewen wrote a decent, fun little book, "Lies Across History," about those. Monuments to Confederate dead in Montana -- not a state, not even a territory, during the Civil War. References to "battles" all over the place, when they weren't battles at all: the Mormons ambush and slaughter a huge wagon train of settlers, but the monument calls it a battle with the federal government. And so on.
Here's hoping you're talking about the excellent seems-to-take-weeks BBC production of P&P... and that you couldn't possibly play F-Zero X for eight hours, or whatever it takes.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, the horrors! Less TV?!?
If TV can't adapt to a new advertising model, or a new business model altogether, then it should die. The current model is based on advertisers shelling out huge coin to pay for audiences that the networks aren't really delivering. Take a look at the Nielson ratings; by any scientific standard those are completely bogus measures of the audience. They asked me to help them for a month, I didn't respond, they left me alone... hmm, does there seem to be a problem with their selection of data? A little less American Experience that month in their records. The networks and the advertizers have been willing to live in that let's-pretend-they're-real-numbers dream, but they're about to wake up.
The monolithic networks will take this very hard, and they're likely not going to survive this change. The general audience they aim for just won't be there. It's been eroding forever, but once the advertising model frays a bit, that sucker's going to split wide open.
if the only money was in the DVD release, why do TV at all?
Actually you imagine an acceptable alternative. Sounds a lot like other point-to-point models, or somewhat like HBO's approach to TV, which has gotten a lot of good press lately. People buy those shows on DVD, and buy them avidly.
Personally I'd imagine a future in which corporations go back to actually producing soecific shows because the target demographic works for them. "Beauty and the Beast" would have various "women's products" as sponsors, for example. Shows like that (not that I ever even saw B & the B) are a good example of how the current system fails; that won its slot amongst adult women, but it didn't attract that audience the networks want, cutting across demographics. In the real world, at least for anyone with the $8-a-month cable I buy, that world doesn't exist any more anyway.
Griffin makes an "iTrip" that lets you choose from many more spots on the dial, and that seemed promising but I didn't want to blow another forty bucks. Easier just to wire it into the stereo using AV jacks or whatever, or get a tape adapter if you've still got a cassette deck. Just feels passe, though.
(You'd think stereo manufacturers would be all over this, but for some reason they're way behind the curve. The parent post's question is so obvious...)
Well, hardly true. There are lots more people just in the Muslim world, to limit the argument to the people you're talking about, who have the same basic value for Allah's good graces, but who don't do this. They may even agree with the aims of the "martyrs" (ugh) involved, but they don't hold with the tactic. It's a complicated world.
If you ask me this has a hell (and I use that word carefully) of a lot more to do with how fundamentalist beliefs interact with the world around them than it does with any particularly Muslim value system. You can easily find examples of comparable acts in history by those of other faiths, can't you? Not so much in a modern terrorist sense, but suicide attacks are hardly new. Nor is murder on a massive scale being justified by religion; take a long read in the old testament sometime. Read something about the crusades.
Either way, the kids blowing themselves up are doing it for complicated reasons, and they're not always easy connections to understand. Mohammed Atta was apparently obsessed with modern skyscrapers being inherently at odds with the true Muslim life, for one example.
At least Italian Job built the Minis into the plot. In this movie they interrupted a chase scene that was arguably the only action sequence in order to let one of the characters stand between two "New iMac" posters for about five dead seconds of screen time. Totally pointless, and how cheap do you need to be? I mean, have the actual computers do something, don't just stand up a couple of posters. Awfully lame. And if it wants to be subliminal, they need not to pause for five beats, the idiots...
that music is titled Powerhouse and was composed by Raymond Scott Awesome! Thank you. (If the iTMS has that around, I'm all over it.)
We're talking about an administration that's asserted its right to lock American citizens up without due process and keep them imprisoned indefinitely with no charges and no representation. 'Cause, you know, they're the bad guys.
Even Ashcroft's dismissing those concerned librarians was astonishingly arrogant and did everything possible to irritate me. No, you don't care about what I'm reading... except you do care, enough to give yourself the ability to look at it without a warrant on the grounds of national security, right? The disdain for the concerns of a bunch of librarians -- who, you know, do kind of give a crap about intellectual freedoms -- couldn't speak more clearly about where this guy is coming from. When librarians care more about the Bill of Rights than the U.S. Attorney General, what does that say to you?
Add to that the more superficially nuts sides of Ashcroft -- having himself "anointed" by Clarence Thomas when he took office, writing and performing his own patriotic songs (and twisting his staff's arms to sing along at his morning meetings), covering the breast of the statue of justice because he didn't like it over his shoulder at press conferences.... I fundamentally do not trust this guy to do the measured, moderate thing by his country. He believes he's on a sort of Christian crusade in government, and I'm not at all confident he'd put the constitution above that end.
So no, this is not a person or an administration whom I "have to have some faith" in. I'd have been much more inclined to allow a moderate administration -- someone like Eisenhower, say -- this sort of encroachment on our rights. Even then it's the wrong path to go down, and it should cause serious introspection on our part to see our government going there.
Which is sort of what you're doing, no offense. Turning this one into a pro-spanking tirade is missing the point and creating a little spat off to the side.
What we need to do isn't scold parents for not spanking their kids. We just need to encourage families to spend time together, it's that simple. When you have time together, the kids will pick up on the values you believe in -- partly because you play the whole parental role and instruct (and sometimes scold) them, but more importantly because they'll see how you act yourself. There are tons of ways that'll come out, lots of different flavors to it. You're into this spanking thing; well, whatever, but at least be there with them, you know?
Personally I don't always blame the parents. Partly this is economic -- two working parents on the same schedule has become the norm in order to keep up our SUV insurance payments, and that means kids just plain have less time with the adults who really do care about them. Scolding a single mother for not spanking her kids more is just not going to help anyone. On the other hand, if her work gave her flex time, for example, that might help. Your "Parents are to blame" angle would probably shut that option down.
But back to the games thing: I like computer games, play them with the kids or with the kids watching often enough, and I'm darn certain they understand the distinction between fantasy and reality there. On the other hand I've run into two-year-olds who couldn't talk except in snippets from video games. Not enough parents in that life, too much games in isolation. That's the difference.
-- Joseph Sobran
This isn't just crackpot ideas people have about black helicopters (that being my Southern Baptist relations' big one) or whatever; it is informing, helping to shape, U.S. Foreign Policy. Think Bush's backing of Sharon has nothing to do with Revelation? It isn't just the Middle East, either. Reagan used to say stuff about living in the "end times." 'Cause, you know, he was fighting that 'evil empire,' you know?
Or take a look at the "Left Behind" series of novels. Best sellers in the U.S.
I had a girl sit in front of me in a creative writing class who told me her plan was to have children soon -- but to schedule them so the apocalypse would come just before they became adolescents. No unruly teenagers -- all thanks to the "end time," again.
These people, or a healthy percentage of them that amounts to millions of Americans anyway, are positively pining for the Apocalypse. Their internal lives can largely involve fantasizing about the end. Without going out of my way in a fairly "liberal" state (Minnesota), I've run into my share.
Sort of reminiscent of the presence of nations on Powell's "coalition of the willing" list who had no idea they were going to be there. The Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, for example, expressed surprise that Powell had included his nation, and said he had no idea why they were on the list.
The indy labels are playing the role of the Solomon Islands, here -- having their name put to something they don't necessarily believe in as a way of strongarming the impression that the RIAA truly represents their industry. It's a strategy aimed at members of congress who're already inclined to believe the RIAA's arguments. In the same way the "willing" thing was meant to convince the U.S. population, or just enough to matter, anyway -- it didn't make any dent at all in world opinion, because everyone knew Bush et al were just trumping up as big a list as they could get to bolster their shaky legitimacy.
Blade Runner largely gets people cranked with its production values. The whole "Why am I here? Why is Rutger Hauer such a tragic figure?" philosophizing side of it fell flat for me even back then in the almost empty theater. We didn't exactly leave the movie talking about the original issues it brought up, and I was, what, young enough not to drive yet... For Harrison Ford it's nowhere near as complete and convincing a performance as Mosquito Coast. The lame narration it was released with, the happy ending thing... It's a cool movie to look at, I guess, but muddled by studio interference and not high on my list of movies to watch again sometime.
Minority Report was maybe the biggest mess I've seen in ten years. The entire Warner Brothers "factory fight" sequence just made me wince, again and again. (One kept hearing that WB music, even -- dump dump dump dump DUMP dump dump dump...) Max von Sydow was no surprise at all, the plotline involving how he avoided detection in the original murder made precisely zero sense (he knows where "the camera" will be for these psychics?), and so on. The movie was maybe a half-hour long, partly owing to the tooo looooong homage to Blade Runner involving the whole eye transplant thing. We left that theater saying Spielberg had overproduced his material in a big way but never answered "What if he kills people inadvertently while he's running away this way?" Pretty basic plot question, you know? It deserved awards for production design and nothing else.
And you're right, the whole "shield surfing" thing and especially the Dwarf jokes got very old in Two Towers... almost as old as the incredibly tedious Tolkienesque declarative language. ("And so.... it begins...") The "Gollum debates himself" scene produced unintentional laughter in both theaters I saw it in. But, you know, I get bashed as a movie snob -- The Third Man, Citizen Kane, the Big Sleep -- and I could bring myself to see Towers a second time, despite all the screaming orcs and so on. The first movie was better, but Towers was okay by me. Not great, but pretty good for what it was.
No, "they" don't call themselves the "N" word "all day long." I can't remember hearing anyone identify herself in that way in, say, the last ten years. Before that it's possible, I guess. Hey, my memory's not perfect. I've never, ever, heard "cracker." (Closest to discrimination I've felt was when the Native American guy asked me for change and was incredulous that I was walking because I didn't have money for the bus.)
But yeah, it seems to happen on Def Comedy Jam, so you're obviously in touch with how black people think. Go you.
Spare clue I had around: It's okay to make self-deprecating remarks about yourself, but when you do it to other people they often don't take it very well. When a gay friend of mine says something, ruefully, about other gay men, that's okay. I don't have get the same allowance when it comes to talking about gay men. I'm not a gay man. So, you know, um... duh.
Did you read any news sources about what happened in, oh, Florida, a few years back? Remember people who said their ballots had been "spoiled" but who were told they couldn't have another by officious poll workers? Remember the charges that the cops were out intimidating voters, that they ran roadblocks in certain neighborhoods on election day? Remember the stories about incompetent poll workers not instructing people in how to use the ballot? Does any of this sound at all familiar?
You ask us why people might feel intimidated from asking for help? In a state where thousands of voters were "mistakenly" purged from the rolls because they were "mistaken" for felons? "C'mon" right back atcha.
frankly I'd rather count every vote as is then try to "determine voter intent." Especially if the voter doesn't take the time to learn the system.
Again, did you read the stories from 2000? "As is" doesn't cover a situation where a hole seems to have been punched out, but the little "chad" is clinging to the back of the card. What does "as is" mean on that vote? It ain't that simple. We all wish it was, but it isn't.
Still, even in Monterey Bay, MBARI has seen all kinds of new siphonophores (look halfway down) and so on -- really amazing animals that may be the biggest group of predators on earth, but that we know next to nothing about.
A low-speed, quiet, long-term observation platform would be made to order for, to use that example, siphonophores: they're slow-moving, they hunt by drifting along extending toxic tentacles, but they're often disturbed by the existing robot subs. Or set this thing to watching a whale carcass as it floats around: scientists have a lot of ideas about the roles dead whales may play, but no way of really observing them long-term.
The lack of speed isn't going to let you follow something like squid around; teuthids have a much better water jet system that'll let them outrun and outmaneuver almost anything we've got. But this'd give us a nice, quiet observation platform for most of the stuff that lives midwater and drifts -- which seems to be a huge share of the life on earth, and almost unexplored by science.
You're right that these "gestures" we're talking about do sound like exactly what the medical literature says causes RSI problems. Wrist-turning moves, over and over, are the basic cause of computer-related RSIs.
But your sample of one is a crock when it comes to dismissing everyone who has pain from this. Extremely useful "knowledge," that -- except all it does is arm you to dismiss other people and feel smug about not having been unlucky yourself. I used to work in bookstores in college, and some of the older clerks had RSI pain from shelving. Not something they were privileged to avoid in their jobs.
To think people are submitting articles to JAMA (003 Jun 11;289(22):2963-9 -- "Computer use and carpal tunnel syndrome: a 1-year follow-up study") trying to figure out whether carpal tunnel is associated with keyboards or mice or a combination. All we had to do was ask you and you could tell us it was a matter of being "reasonably careful." (Note -- those are quotes.)
Hey, guess what that study (and others) have indicated? It's mouse use, not the keyboard, that seems to be a main culprit. RSIs from computer use are almost always related to wrist movement. Trackballs (with a wrist rest especially) seem to be less problematic. Hmm, maybe we could use this information to prevent other people from undergoing a lot of pain, encourage trackballs instead... Oh, sorry, we don't have any sympathy for those people, 'cause they injure themselves out of a lack of common sense. No need to publish medical recommendations to guide businesses in their purchasing, for example. Morons. Let 'em "suffer."
Evidence for this claim, please? I'm honestly curious to know whether it's true.
Your argument is plausible in the abstract, but doesn't match up with the experience of anyone I know. PC monitors ten years ago, leave alone the twenty you're saying should work, were utter crap compared with the one on the iMac today. Following your logic, you would currently be sitting in front of a 20" CGA behemoth that cost you a serious bundle -- and I'm only using that example because the monitors we had in 1983 were designed for Commodore 64s and wouldn't function with your four-year-old computer. You just told me I should have bought the best possible monitor back then and migrated it to each new computer. Um, no thank you?
But I'm sure you have many examples. Please, provide them.
Want a politician who actually hears what people are saying to him and tries to problem-solve about it with a certain amount of candor? Here's your guy. ("Weasel words" are not usually how you'd describe a politician who says he'd consider a new tax but the approach doesn't seem practical.) The article's slant is obvious, but underneath that you see a range of possible approaches to the SPAM problem -- and various members of congress saying they're skeptical about how any of them would work, just like you seem to be.
Except, of course, you haven't heard all the testimony on the subject they have. You haven't even read the article.
I guess you'd like someone who'll cover his butt so that he's never misrepresented, instead. Maybe you'd be interested in someone who "talks tough" about taxes but shows the fiscal responsibility of my ten-year-olds with a Discover card? Maybe (s)he'll even mention this in campaign ads: "Mark Dayton wants to tax everything. Death. E-mail... He wants to tax the whole world..." (I know, that last bit's the sort of peurile hyperbole you see in campaign ads all the time... but you just made it, didn't you?)
Looks like the zebra finch data set was small, pushing the top of the y axis to three times the top Strouhal number for anything on it. I'd call this clumsy more than misleading, but you're right -- it does conveniently push everything down to the bottom, doesn't it? The whole "narrowness of the band" line of argument fits that a little too well...
A classic case where an editor's instincts on this point might lead newspapers to deliberately mislead the reader would be the stock market. When the market's at 10,000 (arbitrary example), to make a graph in which the y axis runs from 9,500 to 10,200 artificially exaggerates changes over time. (Oh my God! The market's down 80 points today! Which is to say, it's down just under 1 percent...) Graphs describing the stock market mostly show a tiny share of the market, the top 5% or 10% of the overall value, with steep rises and drops within a single week. Misleading, and sensationalistic.
Don't let's get started on "government spending" graphs, either...
Let's hope when you hear your neighbor shouting "Oh God he isn't breathing" from the street at 2:17 AM, you can be calm enough to walk into the other room to find the one phone you taped this set of numbers on -- and you haven't worn the numbers off in your daily use so that you can't read them in the dim light without the glasses you can't find. When I heard that voice, I was damn glad it was just 911.
911 is the magical number you call and theoretically you're supposed to get help. In reality, they just send over a man with a gun who's got more emotional baggage and a bigger chip on his shoulder than you do.
(Thankfully I'm not living in an inner city situation, so the paramedics came right quick. The guy didn't live, though. Heart attack.)
Wally O'Dell has sworn to deliver Ohio's electoral votes for G.W. next year. That's well beyond the level of the generality you've just expressed.
And no, companies and industries don't give money equally. In some industries they do, in some there's a much more slanted bias. Think the energy industry's giving money to Howard Dean much? Trial lawyers give money to Democrats. HMOs give money to Republicans. For some mysterious reason, there's a very real Republican slant among these vote-counting companies. We're not talking about them covering their bases both ways, we're talking about openly advocating for one party while selling machines that count votes.
Maybe at -20, I was just too freaking cold to listen to music.
The utter absurdity of this distinction only makes me more steamed over it, not less. Why do you suppose there's a fundamental difference between these two behaviors? Apparently there's a difference, in degree, between sharing movies that haven't been released and sharing ones that have -- a difference so great that if you share your pre-release copy you should be punished like a criminal for a civil offense.
This isn't a bill about the public interest, it's a bill about corporate interests being allowed to install criminal punishments according to how threatened they feel by a behavior. The entire line of thinking is completly wrongheaded, and the punishments are patently disproportionate to the crime. That's the hallmark of a justice system that isn't working. When the punishment's seriously disproportionate to the crime, something is terribly wrong.
(Take a look at three-strikes drug penalties, and you'll have another example. Caught with a joint three times? Do hard time.)
EA's play testers must not even watch real ball. This year's new version, judging by the reviews, lets you make either layups or three, but there's next to no middle jumper game at all. Serious play balance problems.
The Sega series also has had better "franchise" modes, though those break down in any game after a couple of seasons, either way.
Our country is littered with "historical" markers that bear only the faintest resemblances to the events they supposedly commemorate. These Billy the Kid graves are just a tiny spur of that iceberg. History is in the thrall of local chambers of commerce. Think they want to tell a story that isn't favorable to their area?
The number of museums to Custer that are out there is an okay example of when it's just innocent squabbling, not a total whitewash. There are collections of Custer memorabilia scattered from Michigan to North Dakota (and of course Montana), and they're all bitterly opposed to giving up a scrap from his leather belt. It's a matter of tourism and civic pride. Want to see the definitive Custer exhibit? Get ready to spend a summer.
That's when it isn't the obviously censored version. James Loewen wrote a decent, fun little book, "Lies Across History," about those. Monuments to Confederate dead in Montana -- not a state, not even a territory, during the Civil War. References to "battles" all over the place, when they weren't battles at all: the Mormons ambush and slaughter a huge wagon train of settlers, but the monument calls it a battle with the federal government. And so on.
So your answer is: Tourist Dollars.
Jennifer Ehle smiles sooooo winsomely...