Indeed this ruthless efficiency of working every "cog" in the machine to death is considered an end goal of a successful pure capitalist society.
Someone once said (I'm paraphrasing) that capitalism isn't a form of society; it forms a *challenge* to society and we can measure a societies worth by how well it rises to that challenge and preserves the humanity of its members in the face of the monster that is capitalism.
I am not American and do not know much about your constitution but, is there not something to do with religious freedom... and if a marriage is a part of a religious institution how can congress make laws on it?
Or is this sort of interference in religion ok at a state level?
Has it occurred to you that perhaps a prerequisite for life is a moon that creates tidal action within a particular range AND the planet needs to be particular distance away from its star(s)?
Sure.
But the details of the sizes of solar and lunar disk would in no way need to be so exact just for the purposes of creating the required tidal action. And I doubt that the habitable zone is so narrow.
I don't think that having the lunar disk exactly mask the solar disk (as in solar eclipses) nor the earths disk to exactly mask the solar disk (as in lunar eclipses) is in any way connected to the anthropic principle.
At the end of "The Golden Bough" there is a piece on comparison between magic, religion and science.
Some quotes:
In magic man depends on his own strength to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him on every side. He believes in a certain established order of nature on which he can surely count, and which he can manipulate for his own ends.
When he discovers his mistake, when he recognises sadly that both the order of nature which he had assumed and the control which he had believed himself to exercise over it were purely imaginary, he ceases to rely on his own intelligence and his own unaided efforts, and throws himself humbly on the mercy of certain great invisible beings behind the veil of nature, to whom he now ascribes all those far-reaching powers which he once arrogated to himself.
Thus in the acuter minds magic is gradually superseded by religion, which explains the succession of natural phenomena as regulated by the will, the passion, or the caprice of spiritual beings like man in kind, though vastly superior to him in power.
But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular, and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary, the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on.
Thus the keener minds, still pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly, what in magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an inflexible regularity in the order of natural events, which, if carefully observed, enables us to foresee their course with certainty and to act accordingly. In short, religion, regarded as an explanation of nature, is displaced by science.
I'm afraid it's because the vast majority of the moviegoers out there are just not capable of watching a movie any more if it's not crammed full with special effects and made for a 5-year old to understand.
New Quests: there's about 1000 across Northrend. (and fyi, the last big patch before WotLK content - 2.4 - added about 50, 30 of which were repeatable every day.)
Yes, its true!!!
With the advent of the 2.4 patch players are able to do the same 30 quests every single day!
Its so cool! You get to complete *exactly* the same quests! Every single day!!!! Over and over again!!! The fun never ends!
Ummm... Yeah ok so that was kind of a troll, assuming that you see the irony.
Someone has to pay the farmers to sit around and do mindless repetitive tasks.
Ever play World of Warcraft?
Mindless, repetitive tasks is pretty much what people *pay* Blizzard for the priviledge of doing every day.
If it isn't the 'dailies' its 'rep grinding' or 'mat farming' or, for that matter, 'raiding' or 'pvp' which are intensely repetitive and mind numbing when you get down to it.
If either candidate wins, WE ALL LOSE. It's that goddamned simple... but leave it to the apologists to somehow paint Obama as actually GOOD for something. The same holds true for the other side of the aisle.
My personal favorite was a patch note to the effect that:
Coins taken from the bank will now be added to the coins in your inventory instead of replacing them.
I mean even with drunken, meth-addict monkeys doing testing how does THAT make it into the live game????
I gave up.
He, funcom? You want to know how to get people back into the game? Everyone who actually went out and bought the game, give them 2 free months. I'll come back if you do that and not before.
I have a Mac Pro on my desk. Its been there, running, for over 18 months now.
When it was first installed and powered on it emitted the strangest smell I have ever known from any computer ever. And I've been working with computers since the '80s. It was a kind of dry, musty smell.
I kept the windows open for a while because, frankly, the smell was quite strong and disturbing.
Unless you raid or really love doing 'dailies' (ie the same set of quests every. single. day) the game ENDS at the level cap (whether it was 60, 70 or as will be, 80).
I've leveled 2 toons to 70. In both cases hitting 70 was the point at which the game became boring.
I've leveled another to 60 now and I have NO intention of going to Outland with it. I'm having fun in Azeroth at that level. Outland is boring as hell (especially the instances) and I am going far far away from computers for a very long time in a few short weeks. I intend to enjoy the last few weeks of WoW and that means not leveling this toon to 70.
But some players do enjoy their dailies... or being a cog in the corporate machine that is a raiding guild.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed this ruthless efficiency of working every "cog" in the machine to death is considered an end goal of a successful pure capitalist society.
Someone once said (I'm paraphrasing) that capitalism isn't a form of society; it forms a *challenge* to society and we can measure a societies worth by how well it rises to that challenge and preserves the humanity of its members in the face of the monster that is capitalism.
(paraphrasing Jean Baudrillard in 'Simulations').
Churches won't have to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples if it is against their beliefs
No, I mean the other way around.
What if a religious group *had* wanted to recognise same-sex marriages *before* they became 'legal'?
Surely any legislation *against* same sex marriages would have been unconstitutional all along?
I am not American and do not know much about your constitution but, is there not something to do with religious freedom... and if a marriage is a part of a religious institution how can congress make laws on it?
Or is this sort of interference in religion ok at a state level?
You can pry my mini-series from my cold dead hand.
Miniseries... gah...
Contemporary TV content is just... awful. 'Heroes' comes to mind. What octopus would watch that crap?
Buying into HDTV is like... buying a high-end gaming PC in order to play World of Warcraft.
Humanity has been able to carry on numerous projects on a bigger scale than the average human's lifespan.
Yet in democratic nations, humanity is (mostly) unable to carry on projects which would take longer than an electoral term...
And television writers unable to create a consistent storyline which lasts longer than 45 minutes.
Has it occurred to you that perhaps a prerequisite for life is a moon that creates tidal action within a particular range AND the planet needs to be particular distance away from its star(s)?
Sure.
But the details of the sizes of solar and lunar disk would in no way need to be so exact just for the purposes of creating the required tidal action. And I doubt that the habitable zone is so narrow.
I don't think that having the lunar disk exactly mask the solar disk (as in solar eclipses) nor the earths disk to exactly mask the solar disk (as in lunar eclipses) is in any way connected to the anthropic principle.
Also consider how perfect a match are the sizes of the solar and lunar disks and the diameter of the earth.
We have solar and lunar eclipses which are just fantastic.
And by 'fantastic' I mean 'too good to be true'.
Its almost as if these conditions were set up to help us to develop a science of astrophysics.
At the end of "The Golden Bough" there is a piece on comparison between magic, religion and science.
Some quotes:
In magic man depends on his own strength to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him on every side. He believes in a certain established order of nature on which he can surely count, and which he can manipulate for his own ends.
When he discovers his mistake, when he recognises sadly that both the order of nature which he had assumed and the control which he had believed himself to exercise over it were purely imaginary, he ceases to rely on his own intelligence and his own unaided efforts, and throws himself humbly on the mercy of certain great invisible beings behind the veil of nature, to whom he now ascribes all those far-reaching powers which he once arrogated to himself.
Thus in the acuter minds magic is gradually superseded by religion, which explains the succession of natural phenomena as regulated by the will, the passion, or the caprice of spiritual beings like man in kind, though vastly superior to him in power.
But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular, and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary, the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on.
Thus the keener minds, still pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly, what in magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an inflexible regularity in the order of natural events, which, if carefully observed, enables us to foresee their course with certainty and to act accordingly. In short, religion, regarded as an explanation of nature, is displaced by science.
I'm afraid it's because the vast majority of the moviegoers out there are just not capable of watching a movie any more if it's not crammed full with special effects and made for a 5-year old to understand.
Not just movies; try playing World of Warcraft.
New Quests: there's about 1000 across Northrend. (and fyi, the last big patch before WotLK content - 2.4 - added about 50, 30 of which were repeatable every day.)
Yes, its true!!!
With the advent of the 2.4 patch players are able to do the same 30 quests every single day!
Its so cool! You get to complete *exactly* the same quests! Every single day!!!! Over and over again!!! The fun never ends!
Ummm... Yeah ok so that was kind of a troll, assuming that you see the irony.
Well, if they cleared all the new expansion content, then what is left to conquer?
The dailies?
Do you happen to know what Bill Joys views on PHP are?
Because if your description/quotes of his views on genetic engineering/nanotech are anything to go by he would have PHP banned as well.
And by that I mean that he sounds like the perfect man for the job.
Someone has to pay the farmers to sit around and do mindless repetitive tasks.
Ever play World of Warcraft?
Mindless, repetitive tasks is pretty much what people *pay* Blizzard for the priviledge of doing every day.
If it isn't the 'dailies' its 'rep grinding' or 'mat farming' or, for that matter, 'raiding' or 'pvp' which are intensely repetitive and mind numbing when you get down to it.
As a matter of fact, searching google for "8.04 -ubuntu" verses "hardy -ubuntu" returns interesting results.
Yeah try "woody -debian"
Good job they never called a release "stiffie" really eh?
If either candidate wins, WE ALL LOSE. It's that goddamned simple... but leave it to the apologists to somehow paint Obama as actually GOOD for something. The same holds true for the other side of the aisle.
I couldn't have put it better myself.
She is extremely photogenic and has a beautiful smile with even, white teeth.
Do you REALLY think that the majority of Americans are going to be able to see past that?
I don't.
Palin will win the election for McCain.
All I need to do to see my brain cells in action is to take some drugs and then fry an egg.
According to the ads I saw as a kid this is an accurate depiction of my brain on drugs!
My personal favorite was a patch note to the effect that:
Coins taken from the bank will now be added to the coins in your inventory instead of replacing them.
I mean even with drunken, meth-addict monkeys doing testing how does THAT make it into the live game????
I gave up.
He, funcom? You want to know how to get people back into the game? Everyone who actually went out and bought the game, give them 2 free months. I'll come back if you do that and not before.
HURD turned 18 this year (22 if you count the first failed attempt).
There was a *successful* attempt?????
The current bill is like trying to get fuel into a car through the tailpipe instead of filling up the gas tank.
As is well known, if you put food up your ass, shit comes out of your mouth.
I suppose while you are at it you should get your gazpacho warmed up too!
You can age cheap wine all you want, it will not get much better
Lets try some good old asti spumante in this thing, eh?
I have a Mac Pro on my desk. Its been there, running, for over 18 months now.
When it was first installed and powered on it emitted the strangest smell I have ever known from any computer ever. And I've been working with computers since the '80s. It was a kind of dry, musty smell.
I kept the windows open for a while because, frankly, the smell was quite strong and disturbing.
After a time the smell went away.
Unless you raid or really love doing 'dailies' (ie the same set of quests every. single. day) the game ENDS at the level cap (whether it was 60, 70 or as will be, 80).
I've leveled 2 toons to 70. In both cases hitting 70 was the point at which the game became boring.
I've leveled another to 60 now and I have NO intention of going to Outland with it. I'm having fun in Azeroth at that level. Outland is boring as hell (especially the instances) and I am going far far away from computers for a very long time in a few short weeks. I intend to enjoy the last few weeks of WoW and that means not leveling this toon to 70.
But some players do enjoy their dailies... or being a cog in the corporate machine that is a raiding guild.
sigh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Games_(Australian_TV_series)
One of the best comedies to come out of Australia ever. Even better than Shark Bay.
John Clarke, easily one of the great 'straight men' of all time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clarke_(satirist)