[Members] of the progressive wing are very different from conservative Republicans. And just how are they different, exactly? I mean, they both have grandiose ideas about the next bits, pieces, and large chunks we should tack on to our already crufty federal government. Given a choice between the two, I mostly prefer the vision of the Democrats, but it's not all that much of a choice.
Both parties are also very much committed to maintaining our military presence in 130 countries, yet the only thing that's mentioned is their differences on the ridiculously costly war in Iraq, and even those are less different than they are made out to be.
Neither of the parties seem willing to admit that the war on terror is almost as much of a joke as the war on drugs, or that our own meddling in foreign countries' affairs provided and continues to provide the biggest catalyst for terrorist attacks against us.
I want to see a smaller federal government and a reduction of the number of federal programs, most of which are unconstitutional anyway. I want to see our military brought home and our hundreds of unnecessary foreign military bases closed. I want to see the government represent the people again instead of corporate interests. Neither of the candidates that the two parties will run this November are going to do that, so I guess your perception of difference all depends upon what you take for granted.
I'm frankly saddened that so many simply say, "Here is the issue. Choose side A or side B." rather than questioning why we should be concerned with the issues as they are framed in the first place.
Only if they keep it split up for further development. From what I understand, HTML 5 is a huge overhaul that adds tons of new functionality. This takes a big initial effort. I would guess that once all the pieces are in place, improvements and changes will be small enough that a concurrent rollout of each module will be quite feasible and avert the scenario you suggest.
People perceive an article to be biased one direction or the other because of a variety of factors which include: biased word selection, assumptions not supported by data, poor sourcing, open demonization, inaccuracy, omission of facts, and guilt by association as a few examples. Right, so that covers conservative bias. What do the liberals do?;)
I agree, although as a straight, caucasian man I would like to add that having friends who are being discriminated against tell you of their experiences can also make you more aware of it. I believe that's why talking about this stuff is important - because in my optimistic opinion, when most people are made aware of their prejudices and the effects they have on other living, breathing, individual people (as opposed to "black people" or "lesbians" in general), they will work to change their ways.
Recent black immigrants to the USA and their children are far more successful (like Obama) than blacks who have been living in the USA for generations. That strongly suggests the problems of the black community are not primarily due to discrimination. Hard to say, hard to say. You could argue that the problems of black American communities are not due to today's discrimination, but it's very hard to separate black American culture from its roots in America's past, and those roots obviously include slavery, segregation, and discrimination.
That is not to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of historic white America, either, but you would be hard pressed to convince me that those past injustices played no role in this current situation.
Yes, and your value of Y, Chinese restaurant owners, will probably show a greater percentage of people of Chinese descent, and therefore lower percentage of whites, because one would expect Chinese restaurants to hold a stronger attraction for people of Chinese descent; it's a part of their (native|ancestral) culture. So here, of course personal choices come into play.
The question (or, rather, a question) is if the American video game industry has the same cultural draw for white American males that would account for their disproportionate representation in the industry, and if not, why not.
I believe that it does to some extent, and I think that this accounts for much of the disparity, though there's also undoubtedly some social inequality in the mix as GP suggested. As gaming becomes more mainstream, more black people (and other minorities) are playing games - it's not just for pasty-faced basement-dwellers anymore!
Based on my little slice of personal experience, the boom really only started taking off in the late 1990s, so a lot of minority kids didn't really dig into gaming until then, and I think it's a bit too soon to expect their influx into the industry. My guess is that within the next 5 years or so we'll see a decent increase in minority students enrolled in game design programs and entering the professional industry. (I also think that better design tools will be made available to the general public, and that you'll see almost as many people designing and releasing amateur, no-budget games as there are people putting stuff onto YouTube, but that's a topic for another discussion.)
Come on, you can do better than that! Perhaps you simply overestimate my ability. I'm not that well-versed in being an asshole.
For the record, I agree with your well-documented facts. Even given those facts, I think that dismissing the story out-of-hand is premature. No matter how many bad drivers rationalize their behavior, there also exists the documented fact that yellow lights have legal lower and upper limits. The named cities have set their light lengths below the legal limits. This in and of itself is cause for alarm. I'll accept that their reasoning behind doing so may not be "to generate revenue," as I don't think any city officials have come out and said as much, but what else could it be?
Anything that begins with the standard "they must want the revenue" rationalization is self-deluding crap. So, what you're saying is, the article is "self-deluding crap" because this one time at Band Camp you met some people who were self-deluded, while you got to play civic hero and make the world a safer place for everyone. Good for you. We're supposed to congratulate you for that, right?
Did you even bother finishing the summary, where it says that they've set the length of yellows to below the legal limit? How can you argue that that will increase safety? Or did you merely feel it necessary to simply spew out your willfully uninformed opinion?
Boston is not a fun place to drive, unless you're a fan of living out Kafkaesque fantasies.
The single time I drove in Boston, I encountered a ?-lane road, where the street was wide enough for two-and-change per side, plus some trolley tracks in the center. At least two lanes were being made by traffic per side, though there were no markings for any, and nutballs in the oncoming traffic were somehow *sharing* the trolley tracks in the center with nutballs headed my way.
Not six blocks later, a flip-top dumpster like you normally see behind restaurants was just sitting in the middle of the road, as if a garbage truck driver had realized he'd mistakenly taken it with him and said, "well, that's quite far enough." Nobody around me seemed bothered in the least. That's when I knew for sure that I was out of my element.
It's a problem of escalation. In my area, southeastern PA, there are a ton of traffic lights that should have protected left turns (because of traffic increases over the past decade) but don't. Originally, there was not enough traffic on the road for this to matter. Then, five or six years ago, I could still count on oncoming traffic to come to a stop on yellow, so I could make my left. Now, due to other people taking advantage of the orange light ("It was yellow when I entered the intersection!") my choice is to either make my left turn on a stale yellow (if I'm lucky) or during the time that all lights are red, or not make my left turn ever.
I don't like it any more than you do, but them's the breaks.
What's wrong with fast acceleration on green? I like to get up to speed quickly, and it tends to create a nice, safe distance between me and the guy behind me.
Let's also not pretend that any kind of real "level-headed discourse" is possible in this area. There's just not that much of value that the "critical thought" and "dogma" camps can say to each other. You're ignoring a third camp that generally accepts ideas of God (in various forms) without subscribing to religious dogma, and is heavily reliant upon critical thought. I speak of the philosophers, among others, who I will admit comprise a small subset of humanity, but they have been present throughout the ages and were responsible for the birth of scientific pursuit.
His main position seems to be that it's not OK to let any and all unfounded beliefs slide unchallenged, simply because they are promulgated under the "religion" banner. Since religion is so used to getting a free pass, I guess that makes him a "prick" and an "asshole". No, as I said before, he is quite inflammatory at times. I'm all for challenging beliefs, but you're not going to win many converts by talking down to them. I think he gives atheists a bad name...or at least those atheists who see him as some sort of hero-crusader.
[M]ost of the mono-theists think God is really all about them. God is so they can justify what they want. It justifies the suppression of the rights of minorities, It justifies the abuse of women, and children. Do you honestly believe that this attitude is unique to the religious? It's a convenient excuse, but the majority of people I have come into contact with have acted the same way regardless of their religious beliefs. Humans are generally a selfish and uncaring lot.
Its a little bit selfish to think that you matter so much to the creator of the universe, if there is such a thing, that he cares about small pointless things, that Humanity and its Earth somehow hold some special place in the cosmos. If there is a "First one." does it not stand to reason that we really wouldn't matter? I would say that we matter a lot, but I maintain a quirky belief system, a form of pantheism, so you must excuse me.
Theists are not more socially adapted to survival. Quite the opposite. The rational survive in an emergency. The religious panic and pray, and as a result die. That's a false dichotomy embedded in another false dichotomy. Impressive =)
As a result of religion, we have county school boards embroiled over "intelligent design." We have propoganda that claims that Evolution is completely random. We have politicians telling students that condoms don't work (They can break/tear but thats different.)and as a result STDs are rampant. Religion is a mad house that delights in psychotic behavior of all kinds. Its a cauldron and opiate. I think it's more accurate to say that this is a result of zealotry more than religion, which may or may not be a nit-pick. Either way, I think you're oversimplifying the issue. I will agree that organized religion plays a major part here, but I think it's the "organized" bit that causes most of the trouble, not the "religion" bit.
He isn't famous for being an advocate of Darwin's evolutionary theory. He's famous for being an asshole about religion while advocating Darwin's evolutionary theory and atheism.
In other words, he's not that far from a Falwell in terms of inflammatory rhetoric. He is willfully antagonistic towards religious groups for no other reason I can find except that some of the assholes in those groups are famously antagonistic towards evolution and/or atheism. Perfectly understandable, but let's not pretend he's a role model for level-headed discourse.
He's an intelligent guy. His defense of evolution is good. I haven't read his defense of atheism, but I'll bet it's pretty good too. I still maintain that the main reason he's famous is for being a prick.
My personal favorites from the series are Thief of Time and Reaper Man, the second featuring Death as one of the main characters. These two struck me as having some very good content character-wise as well as maintaining the usual Discworld quirkiness.
You do realize that they uploaded that logo, the "deceptive" one you're berating, today, which just happens to be April 1? And that they did so specifically to spite T-Mobile? And that they wrote a blog post stating exactly their actions and intent?
I wonder how much of its spyware-fu is "sneaky and underhanded tactics" versus "design philosophy." I mean, a Mac is designed internally, from the ground up, as a fully integrated system that is not trivial to break. How many of those Windows entry points are there to make iTunes / QuickTime easily accessible from anywhere, exposing the functionality that Apple expects that a user would expect? How much of its design complexity stems from programmers being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of bit-fiddling required to get said functionality under Windows?
I think these are valid points to consider, though I doubt there is any excuse for an uninstall to simply not work as advertised. I also may be talking out of my ass, as I have no idea what goes into making an app on OS X.
The work mentioned by the original poster reflects your thoughts almost exactly. Gene Wolfe's in-book description of a destrier sounds more like a cat or a lizard than a conventional horse. The only difference is that Wolfe's story is set in an age where the genetic engineering took place long ago, and the secrets of the art are lost with so much other advanced knowledge, making his future is at least as far removed from the one you envision as yours is from the days where regular old horses were the primary means of transportation.
Slashdot Mirror
This thread is useless without video!
Both parties are also very much committed to maintaining our military presence in 130 countries, yet the only thing that's mentioned is their differences on the ridiculously costly war in Iraq, and even those are less different than they are made out to be.
Neither of the parties seem willing to admit that the war on terror is almost as much of a joke as the war on drugs, or that our own meddling in foreign countries' affairs provided and continues to provide the biggest catalyst for terrorist attacks against us.
I want to see a smaller federal government and a reduction of the number of federal programs, most of which are unconstitutional anyway. I want to see our military brought home and our hundreds of unnecessary foreign military bases closed. I want to see the government represent the people again instead of corporate interests. Neither of the candidates that the two parties will run this November are going to do that, so I guess your perception of difference all depends upon what you take for granted.
I'm frankly saddened that so many simply say, "Here is the issue. Choose side A or side B." rather than questioning why we should be concerned with the issues as they are framed in the first place.
O RLY?
Only if they keep it split up for further development. From what I understand, HTML 5 is a huge overhaul that adds tons of new functionality. This takes a big initial effort. I would guess that once all the pieces are in place, improvements and changes will be small enough that a concurrent rollout of each module will be quite feasible and avert the scenario you suggest.
But I don't even know how to witch...
Wish I had mod points. This is the most informative post I've read this year!
=)
I agree, although as a straight, caucasian man I would like to add that having friends who are being discriminated against tell you of their experiences can also make you more aware of it. I believe that's why talking about this stuff is important - because in my optimistic opinion, when most people are made aware of their prejudices and the effects they have on other living, breathing, individual people (as opposed to "black people" or "lesbians" in general), they will work to change their ways.
That is not to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of historic white America, either, but you would be hard pressed to convince me that those past injustices played no role in this current situation.
Yes, and your value of Y, Chinese restaurant owners, will probably show a greater percentage of people of Chinese descent, and therefore lower percentage of whites, because one would expect Chinese restaurants to hold a stronger attraction for people of Chinese descent; it's a part of their (native|ancestral) culture. So here, of course personal choices come into play.
The question (or, rather, a question) is if the American video game industry has the same cultural draw for white American males that would account for their disproportionate representation in the industry, and if not, why not.
I believe that it does to some extent, and I think that this accounts for much of the disparity, though there's also undoubtedly some social inequality in the mix as GP suggested. As gaming becomes more mainstream, more black people (and other minorities) are playing games - it's not just for pasty-faced basement-dwellers anymore!
Based on my little slice of personal experience, the boom really only started taking off in the late 1990s, so a lot of minority kids didn't really dig into gaming until then, and I think it's a bit too soon to expect their influx into the industry. My guess is that within the next 5 years or so we'll see a decent increase in minority students enrolled in game design programs and entering the professional industry. (I also think that better design tools will be made available to the general public, and that you'll see almost as many people designing and releasing amateur, no-budget games as there are people putting stuff onto YouTube, but that's a topic for another discussion.)
For the record, I agree with your well-documented facts. Even given those facts, I think that dismissing the story out-of-hand is premature. No matter how many bad drivers rationalize their behavior, there also exists the documented fact that yellow lights have legal lower and upper limits. The named cities have set their light lengths below the legal limits. This in and of itself is cause for alarm. I'll accept that their reasoning behind doing so may not be "to generate revenue," as I don't think any city officials have come out and said as much, but what else could it be?
Did you even bother finishing the summary, where it says that they've set the length of yellows to below the legal limit? How can you argue that that will increase safety? Or did you merely feel it necessary to simply spew out your willfully uninformed opinion?
Boston is not a fun place to drive, unless you're a fan of living out Kafkaesque fantasies.
The single time I drove in Boston, I encountered a ?-lane road, where the street was wide enough for two-and-change per side, plus some trolley tracks in the center. At least two lanes were being made by traffic per side, though there were no markings for any, and nutballs in the oncoming traffic were somehow *sharing* the trolley tracks in the center with nutballs headed my way.
Not six blocks later, a flip-top dumpster like you normally see behind restaurants was just sitting in the middle of the road, as if a garbage truck driver had realized he'd mistakenly taken it with him and said, "well, that's quite far enough." Nobody around me seemed bothered in the least. That's when I knew for sure that I was out of my element.
It's a problem of escalation. In my area, southeastern PA, there are a ton of traffic lights that should have protected left turns (because of traffic increases over the past decade) but don't. Originally, there was not enough traffic on the road for this to matter. Then, five or six years ago, I could still count on oncoming traffic to come to a stop on yellow, so I could make my left. Now, due to other people taking advantage of the orange light ("It was yellow when I entered the intersection!") my choice is to either make my left turn on a stale yellow (if I'm lucky) or during the time that all lights are red, or not make my left turn ever.
I don't like it any more than you do, but them's the breaks.
What's wrong with fast acceleration on green? I like to get up to speed quickly, and it tends to create a nice, safe distance between me and the guy behind me.
And if you answered c, "show down and stop," you've probably been drinking. Please step out of the vehicle, sir.
He isn't famous for being an advocate of Darwin's evolutionary theory. He's famous for being an asshole about religion while advocating Darwin's evolutionary theory and atheism.
In other words, he's not that far from a Falwell in terms of inflammatory rhetoric. He is willfully antagonistic towards religious groups for no other reason I can find except that some of the assholes in those groups are famously antagonistic towards evolution and/or atheism. Perfectly understandable, but let's not pretend he's a role model for level-headed discourse.
He's an intelligent guy. His defense of evolution is good. I haven't read his defense of atheism, but I'll bet it's pretty good too. I still maintain that the main reason he's famous is for being a prick.
My personal favorites from the series are Thief of Time and Reaper Man, the second featuring Death as one of the main characters. These two struck me as having some very good content character-wise as well as maintaining the usual Discworld quirkiness.
You do realize that they uploaded that logo, the "deceptive" one you're berating, today, which just happens to be April 1? And that they did so specifically to spite T-Mobile? And that they wrote a blog post stating exactly their actions and intent?
Congratulations, you've been had.
You had better be prepared for a scathing reply from your parent post. That fucker knows latin.
I'm just sayin...
Not a meme, but a possibly obscure reference to the orangutan librarian of Discworld.
I wonder how much of its spyware-fu is "sneaky and underhanded tactics" versus "design philosophy." I mean, a Mac is designed internally, from the ground up, as a fully integrated system that is not trivial to break. How many of those Windows entry points are there to make iTunes / QuickTime easily accessible from anywhere, exposing the functionality that Apple expects that a user would expect? How much of its design complexity stems from programmers being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of bit-fiddling required to get said functionality under Windows?
I think these are valid points to consider, though I doubt there is any excuse for an uninstall to simply not work as advertised. I also may be talking out of my ass, as I have no idea what goes into making an app on OS X.
The work mentioned by the original poster reflects your thoughts almost exactly. Gene Wolfe's in-book description of a destrier sounds more like a cat or a lizard than a conventional horse. The only difference is that Wolfe's story is set in an age where the genetic engineering took place long ago, and the secrets of the art are lost with so much other advanced knowledge, making his future is at least as far removed from the one you envision as yours is from the days where regular old horses were the primary means of transportation.