In a way, I'm rather bemused by all the talk of wired dorms, and people being required to stay in dorms their freshman year...
At the university I attended (University of Louisville), you literally cannot get campus housing, period, if you live within thirty miles of the campus--so in essence, if you live ANYWHERE in Jefferson County, KY you can't get campus housing. The CLOSEST one can hope to get to campus housing is a co-op (read: indentured slavery) program with UPS for housing near UPS as long as one does co-op work for Oops Inc.:P
AFAIK the dorms at U of L are probably not wired, either (of course, we poor city-students would never know that...we aren't allowed dorms, because they are short of dorm space to the point where many houses are rented out for student apartments near the campus...)...then again, it IS a state university that seems to concentrate on its athletic program to the detriment of what was once one of the better engineering schools in the US (Speed Scientific School)...
Fortunately, the school has X-terms damn near everywhere in the Speed School areas:) so most folks just hop on the X-terms...
Then again, Louisville isn't particularly wired at all, though. Even though we have no less than three big ISPs in the area, one which is supposedly going to be a backbone site soon, the fastest options are Insight@Home (which as we all know, @Home is about to be UDPd because their abuse department mail goes to/dev/null, so THAT sucks) and HellSouth ADSL (which can only be installed if you are less than 5 miles from a switching station, and if there is no fiber between you and the switching station, and only if you are running Win95/98 or MacOS 8, and only if there is no "old copper" between you and the switching station, and only if you are willing to pay $400 for installation and $80/month (regular line cost of $20/month + $60/month for ADSL), and only if you are willing to pay MORE per month if you don't want to use Hellsouth.net [in Louisville they actually charge you MORE if you want to go with one of the local ISPs that support ADSL like iglou.com--and the average cost of ISPs here is around $17.50-$20.00/month, but Hellsouth specifically charges extra if you don't want to use Hellsouth.net], and only if the stars are right and you are willing to give your firstborn child...). The cable, we're fucked on till 2006 (because our beloved city and county officials [NOT] signed exclusive monopoly agreements with what was then Storer Cable for 25 years, and the cable franchises run out respectively in 2002 and 2006 (if memory serves) so we can't get anyone else to get cable service from) and with ADSL we're as badly and permanently fucked as anyone unfortunate enough to be in Hellsouth country (they charge out the arse so they can sell frac-T1 lines; they have pretty well locked everyone else out of the local residential phone market by charging telcos the same rates they would charge businesses to lease lines (which are among the most expensive in the US, and which make it literally impossible for ANY company to provide local phone service cheaper than Hellsouth unless they lay the line directly to one's house) and do other crap like charging MORE if you don't want to go with Hellsouth because you have an ISP already [so it's the same crap as you'd have dealing with Insight@Home, except it is far likelier that you can actually get Insight@Home installed and running] and illegally offering data services before they've even opened up the local phone monopoly (which I don't see them doing until a) someone who can lay lines like Sprint comes in, b) a class-action lawsuit is filed against Hellsouth, or c) the FCC finally gets the cojones up to give Hellsouth the spanking it so badly deserves)...).
(Did I mention that monopolies in general truly suck and actually DECREASE options for consumers? I pray every day that someone comes in to break the phone monopoly (and I don't care whom--Sprint, Unidial, two kids with cans and a string--I ain't choosy at this point) so I don't have to deal with the heap of incompetence that makes US Worst actually look GOOD that is Hellsouth, and so I don't have to wait for @Home to be spanked into submission and them having to open the cable up without making me pay for @Home as an ISP as well as a cable feed (I have my own local ISP, thank you, and I'd rather use them, thanks)...)
I mean, if you look at the Talk.Origins FAQ you will see that while there have been things like a bird-dinosaur, the creationists always say things like "that's just a bird" or "that's just a dinosaur" or whatever. In actuality is more a smooth gradient, Point A and point B are different, but the line is blurry.
You can say that again...:)
First off, minor nit to pick--many (if not most) paleontologists are now firmly convinced that birds in fact are dinosaurs, specifically theropods (in fact, on lists that discuss dinosaurs, it is not uncommon to hear folks talk about "avialan theropods" [aka birdies]). This is because of a lot of fairly recent research into the matter (most of it only in the last ten to fifteen years, and possibly the most spectacular evidence only started coming to light around two years ago).
To give a good example of how the line gets real blurry...most paleontologists and others list Aves, that is, birds, as theropods closer to Archaeopteryx than to other dinosaurs. Well, there's now been found a wee problem with that--the closest relatives to Archaeopteryx turn out to be dromaeosaurs like Utahraptor and Deinonychus and Velociraptor, enough that some paleontologists want to make archaeopterygids and dromaeosaurs part of the same family.:) (This is partly from a lot of transitional fossils--which I'll get into in a bit--and partly because it's been found fairly recently that archaeopterygids have little sickle-claws on their feet and their body structure in general is amazingly similar to dromaeosaurs in general.)
Even worse, dromaeosaurs are actually younger in the fossil record than Archie is--there is the very real possibility that dromaeosaurs, which have traditionally been classified as dinos and NOT as birds, are actually secondarily flightless descendants of archaeopterygids or at the very least a sister group that evolved from a common ancestor.
The fact that a fair number of transitional fossils appearing to be transitional between Archie and dromaeosaurs (such as Rahonavis and some others) doesn't help, nor does the fact that it seems sicle-claws may have been a fairly common trait among early birds and dromaeosaurs.
It further yet doesn't help matters in sorting it out that feathers can no longer be used as a diagnostic characteristic of birds. For something like two years now, we have known about some amazing finds of dinosaurs with feathers (Greg Paul and Bob Bakker, who drew dinosaurs like Deinonychus and Compsognathus with feathers, were right all along and Jurassic Park was dead wrong with bare-nekkid dromaeosaurs)...the first non-avian dinosaur with protofeathers being Sinosauropteryx (thought to be a compsgnathid), Caudipteryx (thought now to be a basal oviraptor--incidentially, oviraptor clutching behaviour has now been proven in fossils--there is a fossil Oviraptor discovered that was covering its eggs exactly like a mother chicken), Protoarchaeopteryx,Archaeoraptor, and many others...the new Chinese dino fossils are really setting paleontology on its ear and pretty much have clinched that birds are theropods after all...
There are some other examples that muddy up the waters for birds, too...one group that was once thought to have spawned wading-birds is now recognised as the first radiation of ducks (chadriiforme ducks) and then there were the phorusracids...large, flightless birds that existed till around two million years ago in South America, which redeveloped fingers and sickle-claws as they became ground predators, just like their ancestors 70 million years ago (yes, even after toothed birds became extinct, there were still enough non-avian theropodian traits that a "neo-neo-theropod" could evolve in phorusracid birds...)...so often things aren't as cut and dried as we like them to be. I think it's neat as hell, though:)
(OK, so I have just a WEE bit of passing interest in theropods, especially dromaeosaurids. Partly because I like to draw 'em on occasion (to the point of having done a "furry" pic of a feathered dromaeosaurid;) and partly because I think they're bloody neat animals. I also admit the idea of the momma-cardinal that visits my bird feeder being a dinosaur is neat; I'll also dare anyone who witnesses a mob of sparrows fighting over a bird-feeder to deny birds are dinosaurian:)
Re:Here's a question I have
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Tim Behrendsen dun said:
our big boogieman is religion, apparently. I'm not particularly religious myself, but I just don't feel this fear that many slashdotters do of religion. Yes, you can cite particular abuses (striking evolution comes to mind), but the amount of damage caused by religous zealots (in modern times, please) pales to the amount of damage caused by liberal zealots
Well, I don't know about other Slashdot readers, but in my case it happens to be from hard experience.
You see, for the first twenty-five years of my life I grew up in a family that was in what may best be described as a "Bible-based cult"--one which also happens to be one of the largest churches in one of the largest fundamentalist "Christian" denominations worldwide (if you must know, it's the exact same denomination that the "Brownsville Movement" in Florida--which was actually exposed nationwide as being a Bible-based coercive group--is in; it's the same denomination that the vast majority of televangelists and Religious Reich heads are in; it's a little denomination based out of Springfield, MO, and it has two million members alone in the US; from what I've been able to find out after walking away over ten years ago, the entire denomination is rife with problems of both individual churches and the denomination as a whole going outright coercive, sometimes with deadly results--several people have died in "exorcisms" in past [deliverance ministry, which is basically "all of your doubts about the church and anything trying to drive you off the path are the results of demons, anyone who's against us is obviously demon posessed, and you have to pray the demons out even if it's with another person and you're exorcising someone against their will"] in this denomination).
Said Bible-based cult also happens to be one of the larger churches where I live, and pretty much RUNS the Religious Reich's political wing in my state (Kentucky, if you're curious).
I still get teh willies thinking back on stuff before I walked away, when they were preaching stuff in Sunday school like "the head of NBC is a Satanist" or "Don't use stuff with placenta in it because it contains ground up aborted babies" or "It's going to be a good thing when nuclear war breaks out, because we'll be up in heaven laughing as all the sinners fry" and practically going to orgasm when the Cold War threatened to turn hot (or later, during the Gulf War--they were convinced Saddam Hussein was going to start Armageddon--or later yet, with the Y2K crisis). I shudder when I realise that the folks who are saying this only support Israel because they think that if they kiss enough arse they'll be fighting with them when the End comes, and if it weren't for the fact they believe a war with Israel being involved is going to start the war to end all wars they wouldn't give a shit...they also claim ANY environmental help is "nature worship" and have actually stood up and said it is man's "duty to subdue the earth and use all her resources, and we don't need to worry about preserving things really because the Rapture is going to be Real Soon Now and we'll get a new heaven and new earth anyways"...
And I get downright scared when I realise that it's these folks who are one of the biggest groups that DO vote consistently (because to them, voting is a literal Jihad--a righteous struggle to turn America into a theocracy)...and largely because they are told not to read ANY mainstream media (the better to isolate them, my dear, and allow Preacher Man to feed them ever larger amounts of horsecrap) these people are utterly convinced they are doing the right thing.
Part of the reason it's my big bugaboo is I walked away from that shite, and I'm not about to let them drag the whole of America into what I walked away from because I realised it reeked to Hell and back and generally would NOT be something that Jesus would exactly approve of IMHO. I grew up with it for 25 years, and I know a lot of what exactly the Religious Reich DOES have planned for the US, and I can say in all truth that it is not something I would wish on my worst enemy and it is something that even would make the book "The Handmaid's Tale" pale in comparison (btw, I consider that one of the scariest books I've ever read--because I know all too well how it CAN happen here, and mostly by people not giving enough of a damn to stop it).
Now, as for welfare--I'll agree not everything has been run right. I also don't think it should be taken away entirely (especially considering that most people on welfare are single moms and/or poor families--who, by and large, aren't popping out "welfare babies" but have had crappy luck--many of which WANT to better themselves). One thing I think could SERIOUSLY help get people off welfare is raising the minimum wage (right now, a mother with kids actually makes more on welfare than in a typical job if she's unskilled; she also gets Medicaid and state help for doctors for her kids, which she loses if she gets a job most of the time; most of the training programs for single moms going to "workfare" in Kentucky seem to be for child-care [which pays exactly jack] instead of skilled jobs like, oh, IS or even data entry where she might actually make seven bucks an hour at UPS rather than $5.15...). Sometimes folks DO need extra help, and I don't think the churches can be relied on to give it (without strings--if I ever ended up homeless, I think I'd be well and truly screwed; most homeless shelters are run by church groups that basically make you hear a sermon for bedding and food:P...I'd not want to go through that, because I'm a walkaway and even now discussion of Christianity period is painful to me...I've been religiously abused, and you might say I still have a bit of post-traumatic stress disorder about the whole thing:P).
Speaking of homelessness, here's a nice couple of statistics for you: A fair number of kids on the street are kids who have had to leave their households because of fear of physical, mental, sexual, emotional, and/or spiritual abuse. It is estimated that a fair number of these kids are gay kids who escape fundy households; gay kids in fundy households have the single largest suicide rate of ANY group, even above other gay teens [which in and of themselves have the largest suicide rate of any teen group] as well as the largest rates of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse...many of those kids either suicide or run away in an effort to prevent abuse that is almost to the point of unmaking what those kids are inside.
Another fun statistic: Most "Bible-based coercive groups" (using the definition that most groups use now--it is basically a checklist of behaviours--you can find copies on any Google search on "coercive groups") tend to fall into smaller denominations of fundamentalist groups in the US. (In fact, the vast majority are breakaway denominations, or breakaways of groups that broke away from, four denominations: the Methodists, the Assemblies of God, the Church of Christ, and the Church of God; even some churches in the last three denominations have had problems with coercive practices.) Many of these groups are the fastest growing churches in the US, and some of them are also among the largest; they are also by far the most politically active, and even denominations considered traditionally mainstream have been taken over by fundies (most notably the Southern Baptist Convention, formerly a right-moderate church; fundamentalists swept the elections some years ago and have enacted a massive purge that has led to several churches outright being forced to leave as well as the dismantling of the only social works college in the world [at the Seminary]--literally everyone who is a moderate or who has had truck with the moderates is being run out, and there's very serious talk of a split of the entire Southern Baptist Convention over the mess; if things continue one may have to eventually list the Southern Baptists as a bible-based coercive group, because they're starting to use the same coercive techniques as other coercive groups:( ).
Another fun statistic: The hardest group to walk away from is the Scientologists; the second hardest tend to be Bible-based cults (because most people don't think of "Christian" churches being coercive in the same way Scientologists are; even though the church I walked away from uses every single technique Scientologists do, and some others which are harmful [like "shepherding"/"cell churches" where the church members are divided into groups of five to basically "keep watch" over each other and make sure they don't stray from church doctrine--which makes it very difficult to walk away]). Spiritual abuse, by and large, is STILL not taken seriously by child protective services, largely because most social workers have never been taught about it.
Another fun statistic: Children who are raised in coercive groups who do not walk away by their early teens generally don't walk away, period. Chances are far better if they joined in late childhood or in their teens; there are literally no statistics on walkaways who walked away from a coercive group they were raised in (or who have family members in the group across several generations) because it is literally so rare an occurence that reliable statistics can't be done. Most kids who walk away from coercive groups their family is in either suffer severe abuse, end up suicidal, end up running away, or end up involuntarily committed to some "training center" designed to literally brainwash the kid [this is doubly so for gay kids in fundy households, who are often involuntarily outed and "exorcised", or sent to "reparative therapy" (an aside--"reparative therapy" is psychotherapy designed to "cure" someone of being gay--it has almost a 100% failure rate, the two founders of possibly the largest fundy group pushing reparative therapy {Exodus} have now admitted it doesn't work {and are a happy gay couple besides}, and the American Psychiatric Association {which hasn't recognised being gay as a "disorder" for well nigh over 25 years} has condemned it as being potentially VERY destructive to one's psyche)].
Home schooling programs have also gone way up. Something like fifty to sixty percent of homeschool groups and sources for curriculum are fundy-controlled; most fundy homeschool groups use the "A-Beka" curriculum which is the same one used in fundamentalist-run parochial schools. (Those of you who are going shopping for homeschool stuff may want to be VERY careful as a result.) Most of the folks pushing homeschooling are fundies, to the point a fundamentalist college has opened up for homeschooled youth to train them to be political candidates for the Religious Reich (no, I am not making this up). Basically to keep them locked away forever so they never question or doubt...never have the chance to walk away.
I dare say that by the time things are said and done, we'll find probably that liberalism and conservatism have destroyed an equal number of lives--at the hands of the fundies at either end, at that. It's only now coming out how much harm has been caused by religious abuse, for example, much like how in the 70's people only started to see the harm of welfare without training programs and an increase in living wages.
Re:Here's a question I have
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Tim Beherendsen dun said:
Does Steve Case lean toward liberal or conservative, and will that affect Time Warner? Case hasn't shown any particular political leanings that I know of. If he leaned toward being conservative, it would be interesting to see if finally we could have a media outlet that didn't have the huge liberal bias (I guess Fox news is trying to be more balanced, but I don't get them on my cable).
Liberal? United States media in general? Liberal?
*sound of yours truly ROTFLMAO*
Just in case you didn't know:
The media in the US may best be described as right-wing moderate. The US (both in government and in media) is, by far, the most conservative (in the "right-wing" sense) in the Western world; even Canadian and British media are more liberal (and the Brits seem to whinge on how things have gone more conservative--listen, please don't whinge to ME on it unless they take off the watershed hour, stop allowing shows taking the piss of the priesthood, stop allowing barenekked women, and stop allowing you to say "fuck" and "shit" on British TV--NONE of which we in the States would EVER be able to get away with--a friend from Belfast was actually SHOCKED at how conservative American media is, and he's from a part of the world where people are trying very hard to kill each other over which flavour of Christianity is best:P).
America has swung so far to the right over a period of 25 years that, if Richard Nixon were alive today and running on the platform he ran on in his last election, he would be considered a liberal in America's present political climate. (No, I am not making this up. The scary thing is, Richard Nixon was considered an arch-conservative in his time.)
The United States is (and yes, I know some of you will accuse me of fearmongering and all, but I think I have grounds to say this--considering I grew up around psychofundies for 25 years of my life) precariously close to joining the rest of the countries that are more conservative than the US--that is, becoming a theocracy (just in this case a "Christian" one rather than an "Islamic" or "Jewish" one). The UnChristian Coalition has effectively taken over the political apparatus of the Republican party in over thirty states; even more frighteningly, other Religious Reich groups are also involved (most notably branch groups of the American Family Association--the selfsame group trying to censor public library feeds under its branch group "Family Friendly Libraries"), they are now trying to go for the Reform Party as well, and the US Taxpayers Party (which is, for all intents and purposes, a fundy-"Christian" political party that also has links to nastier groups yet like "Christian Identity" [who spout the canard that the US is the real "Chosen Nation", that the Jews are just faking at being Jews, and who think all non-white people should be "ethnically cleansed"], and has as part of its platform the establishment of a fundy theocracy in the US [many of the party leaders are "Christian Reconstructionists", who preach the canard that the Founding Fathers really meant the US to be a fundamentalist theocracy and who even want to restore Leviticus-style punishments such as mandatory stoning for being gay or sassing your parents]) has gotten on the ballots in a frightening number of states.
The swing to the right has been both among Republicans and Democrats, and can be attributed largely to fundy groups pressuring both parties (the Religious Reich is really one of the best-funded groups in the US; several Fortune 500 CEOs, such as the head of Coors, the head of Wal-Mart/Sam's Club, and the head of Amway have sat or do sit on the board of the Coalition for National Policy, a secretive "think tank"/planning committee of the Religious Reich), as well as pushing for cuts in taxes and calls to "protect the children" which the fundies are all too welcome to take advantage of. (Here's something I bet you didn't know: You know why fundies push so much for vouchers and school funding to be cut? Part of the actual "party line" for the Religious Reich is to eventually get rid of public schools altogether and FORCE people to go to religious schools--because they know damn well that if they can get the kids young it is unlikely they will walk away [especially from the groups that use coercive tactics, and "Bible-based cults" are the single largest group in the US using coercive tactics aside from the Scientologists].)
Just about the only time media DOES show any sort of liberal bias or even moderate bias is if the owner has some sort of pet project (Turner, for instance, has environmental issues as a "pet project"). Otherwise, things are geared towards big business, the conservative leaders, and calls to "protect the children". (I, for one, worry about the news swinging even FARTHER to the right; AOL has been known to censor the word "breast" even in discussions of breast cancer, as well as have other objectionable practices in censoring chat-rooms and the like [and it doesn't bloody well stop the people trading porn on AOL, trust me].)
The other thing that worries me is this--Most media is owned by three or four large corporations nowadays. As someone noted, they can literally make or break elections (I strongly suspect this is why third parties have such a hard time in the US; they never even get the airtime to discuss platforms and thus never get to be in debates, etc...you'd honestly think the Green Party would get press, seeing as Ralph Nader is head, but most folks don't even know the US HAS political parties besides Republican, Democrat, Reform, and maybe Libertarian). Combine that with the fact that on average, only 25-50% of registered voters vote in elections.
I keep thinking the last time things were set up like that and the last times a nation had such a massive rush to the right...were Afghanistan, Iran, and Germany in the early 30's...one group having so much control over anything is a Bad Thing in my opinion, and I'm naturally distrustful of it.
But by any means, the US media is NOT liberal. Ask your friends outside the US just how liberal it is (as long as they aren't from an Islamic nation, nearly all will tell you it isn't liberal at all, and I'd be willing to put money on it--and the only gambling I do, period, is on the horses at Churchill Downs on Derby Day and on the Powerball when it hits $50 million:) so it can't be said I'm a gambling fool:)
A very few televisions were built with teletext receivers in them (I think Zenith built one). But you'll never see it again here. The vertical blanking lines that were used by teletext are now allocated to Closed Captioning.
Actually, if US-based teletext is the same thing as "text mode" on modern closed-captioning equipped TVs (all TVs with diagonal screen measurements of 13 inches or larger built since 1993 must have built-in CC by law; every CC-equipped TV I've ever seen has the "text mode" in CC along with regular mode, and usually two to four channels of both regular and text mode per TV channel at that) then not only is it not dead but has sort of been blended in with CC in general.
The largest use in most areas for "text mode"/US teletext seems to be in program listings for the hearing impaired (I know ABC occasionally lists these in text mode); in Kentucky, the public broadcast system works with University of Kentucky ag-school and county extension offices in running AGTEXT which is a full system for providing agricultural info (everything from weather to stockyards prices to insect infestation alerts to farming tips) on KET stations. (I discovered it accidentially on Louisville's main KET affiliate when I got a TV with CC [when they were first requiring them by law] and was playing about with the different modes--and was quite suprised to see the teletext in text mode on WKMJ-68:)
I don't know if anyone else is doing anything similar to AGTEXT anymore, but I'd imagine so in states which are still largely rural and also have statewide public broadcast networks and/or big ag-schools like UK has. I think AGTEXT is neat as hell, anyways:)
I'm not exactly sure what teletext is, but I do know that all (or almost all) TVs in the US have "CC" - closed caption. How's that different?
Well, if memory serves, teletext in Europe has a lot more services besides closed captioning--for example, complete program listings, newspaper/news reporting feeds, online shopping on some systems, etc. (Comparing closed captioning in the US to teletext services is a lot like comparing, say, computerised news services to a full-featured BBS system or multimedia-enabled web site. Europe uses it FAR more extensively than we do.)
This is not to say that teletext-type systems are COMPLETELY unknown in the US (I'll give an example of one in a bit), but part of it is that Europe has dedicated the bandwidth for it for some time. In the US, if memory serves, text services including closed captioning are carried on the 21st or 24th line of the 525-line NTSC signal, which is not a hell of a lot of room to stick stuff.
SOME teletext-type stuff besides closed captioning does exist in some areas, though. ABC stations carry program schedules sometimes on the text mode of a closed-caption signal (yes, with closed captioning there are two different modes and anywhere from two to four channels in each mode--regular closed caption mode and "text" mode which is essentially stripped-down teletext--yes, Slashdot readers (at least in the US) can test this on any TV made after 1993 or so with a 13" screen or larger--federal law mandates now that all TVs 13" screen or more have closed-captioning built in, and all of 'em have the text mode, even the cheap-arse models:). Some other stations will do this too, and on the other channels of text or regular CC mode may have captioning in other languages (I'd expect most stations in Miami to offer closed-captioning in Spanish too).
Possibly the neatest use I've seen for "text mode" in US-style closed captioning is how The Kentucky Network or KET, our statewide PBS network, does an agricultural teletext service called AGTEXT in cooperation with the University of Kentucky's agricultural school...basically has weather info, stockyards reports, agricultural hints, agricultural-related weather, etc. In the Louisville area it can be picked up on WKMJ-68 (KET 1; channel 13 on Louisville-area Insight Cable) on channel-1 text mode; I'm pretty darn sure the other KET affiliates statewide (with the exception of KET-2 (WKPC-15) in Louisville, which was formerly an independent PBS affiliate till they were bought out by KET--yes, we actually have TWO public broadcasting channels in Louisville, with different scheduling and double the Britcoms:) also carry the AGTEXT teletext feeds.
I'm not aware if anyone else is doing the AGTEXT thing or similar feeds like how is done in Kentucky, but it'd be very interesting to find out just what CAN be found on other channels/text mode across the US and Canada...maybe a list ought to be done.:)
Fact: humans are the only carnivore who does NOT have tearing incisors (fangs) for the ripping apart of meat. Fact: humans are the only carnivores whose intestines are less than half the length of other carnivores; this plays a VERY important role in the digestion and absorption of meat, thus meaning that humans don't do this very well at all. Fact: humans are the only carnivores that have difficulty in pre-digesting meat in the stomach, unless meat is regularly consumed; this means that the stomach doesn't not initially contain the enzymes to break down meat, and it has to be "learned" over time.
A few minor corrections to your post:
1. Modern humans don't have fangs most of the time, yes (some of us excepted--I, for one, am one of those humans with pointy canines:)=. Older hominids did, though. For that matter, the average molar size of humans has decreased radically, too; early members of Homo including archaic Homo sapiens have molars that are literally twice as wide as in modern humans. Most anthropologists think the reduction in molar size is due to both a) humans learning to process food and b) the fact that, at least in terms of proportion of body parts, humans tend towards "juvenile ape" proportions (in other words, the proportions of our body like head-to-body ratio, the size of our teeth, etc. are more like juvenile apes than the typical "grownup" ape).
2. I think you've got the thing with the gut sizes reversed (it's ok; you aren't the first to have done it, and you aren't the first on Slashdot either to have done it:). Basically, the rule of thumb is that obligate carnivores have short guts, and obligate herbivores have long guts and often specialised parts of the gastrointestinal tract to deal with grasses.
For example, ruminant animals like cows (which are obligate herbivores) have the famous "four stomachs", and intestines over 100 feet long (humans have maybe thirty feet of intestine). Rabbits also have longer intestines, part of their digestion occurs in their appendix, and they are actually coprophagous (they cannot get all the nutrients the first time around, so--and yes, I KNOW this sounds disgusting--they eat their own poo...this is probably because lagomorphs split off from rodents [which are, largely, grain-eaters with tendencies towards being omnivores] fairly recently evolutionarily speaking). Cats, which are obligate carnivores, have teeth which are VERY poorly adapted to eating plants (they are unable to chew--for an example of this, give a kitty cat-grass [available in most pet stores]. Kitty will drop about half of it on the floor because kitty's molars are really good at cutting but suck at CHEWING the cat-grass), have shorter guts than humans (yes, this applies even for big kitties like tigers and the like--if memory serves, pumas have maybe ten feet of small intestine compared to twenty-one feet in humans), and are so adapted as to actually be taurine-dependent (they can no longer synthesize taurine and must get it from meat; otherwise they get fatty heart degeneration and die).
Oddly, humans fit almost exactly in the middle here--as do most great apes, and dogs too (believe it or not, dogs are omnivorous--this shows up more with smaller dog-family members, like foxes, but unlike cats dogs CAN live on vegetable matter; dogs can also still chew, unlike cats). More on great apes and how they fit in in a bit; for now, suffice it to say most apes are in fact omnivorous with the exception of the gorilla (gorillas ARE largely vegetarian, and also have huge guts and a lot more intestine than most apes--that's why they have big bellies compared with orangutans, chimps, and non-obese humans), and the main adaption we have to ANY specialised feeding cycle is that, like most apes, we have to get vitamin C from an external source like citrus fruit (primates are vitamin-C dependent like cats are taurine-dependent; it is probably a primate adaptation to being an animal that eats a lot of fruit in the wild, and most non-primate animals can synthesize vitamin C and do not require an outside dietary source).
3) Now, we're going to get into an area that might be a bit controversial.:) Those of you who are creationists may interpret this as God using the chimps as a design template or as a practical joke; it's up to you. I'm mostly going to be speaking in terms of good old Darwin and Gould here, so don't get TOO offended.:)
The simple fact is (according to all we know from paleontology, anthropology, and genetic phylogeny studies) that Homo sapiens can rightly be considered one of the great apes, and the main reason we don't is we don't like to think of ourselves as mutant chimps:). The branch of the great apes that led to humans, chimps, and bonobos split off around five million years ago or so; gorillas split off around ten million years ago, orangutans a bit before that, and the ancestor of all apes split off around fifteen million years or so ago. We are pretty sure that the ancestor of apes was omnivorous or (probably) fruit-ivorous (mostly eating fruits and leaves), like most primates, and supplementing its diet with the occasional animal or termites or whatnot.
As noted above, humans' closest relatives are chimps and bonobos. Chimps, bonobos, and the ancestor of Ardipithecus (the likely ancestor of Australopithecus, and now regarded as probably being the first hominid) started to split from one another around four million years ago or so. Chimps and bonobos are omnivorous; they will literally eat anything they can get their hands on, and both will forage for plant and fruit foods and kill animals on occasion for food [yes, hunting is actually documented among both chimps and bonobos--yes, it is done for food]. Chimps and bonobos also eat some foods most Western humans go "ooh, icky" at (termites) and--interestingly enough--have been proven to even have early signs of culture in that different troops have different preferred foods and different "traditional" ways of preparing foods (including different tool sets) which are clearly learned behaviours. There is also evidence chimps also teach baby chimps in troops about different medicinal plants (yes, it has been documented that chimps DO self-medicate).
Genetically, humans are not terribly far removed from chimps (even taking into account four million years of separation). We share something like 98 percent of genetic code, for starters; we are literally more closely related to chimps and bonobos than any of the three are related to gorillas (our next closest "great ape" relative). Humans have 46 chromosomes; chimps have 48. (It's going to be really interesting to see the in-depth comparisons that can be done between chimps and humans once a) the Human Genome Project is finished and b) someone does a Genome Project for the other great apes.:) There is some evidence that humans and bonobos might be closer than humans and chimps (though chimps and bonobos are still more closely related to each other).
Chimps, bonobos, and hominids are pretty well adapted to omnivorous lifestyles. With the exception of modern humans (and most anthropologists agree that modern humans are an abberation--this is probably a juvenile trait that has survived precisely because we process our food) they have both big carnivores to rip flesh, AND big molars to grind food. (In fact, Australopithecus had huge molars, bigger than ours in fact. It also had bigger canines.) In the wild they are penultimate omnivores that survive by hunting and gathering (from chimps to human societies that still survive by hunting and gathering).
Now, I will grant that most human societies and most apes don't eat as much meat as Western society does. (There are exceptions, though; Inuit peoples have survived often on nothing BUT meat and some berries, because there is little plant food to be found in the Arctic regions.) It's not a matter of humans not being designed to eat meat, though; in fact, they are designed to eat meat AND vegetables, and in fact to be partially obligate to being both meat-eating AND fruit-eating animals (vegans have to do a LOT of balancing to get enough B vitamins in a diet, and as mentioned before all primates are vitamin-C obligate). We were designed to eat meat every bit as much as chimps and bonobos are, and chimps and bonobos DO go out and kill animals for meat on occasion.
The main reason humans do eat so much meat--and for that matter, why hominids over time lost big canines and lost big grinding teeth that exist in the other great apes--is, because we learned to walk on two legs for longer periods than bonobos do, we got really good at making and using tools (better than the other two branchces of the chimp family, anyways). We eventually figured out how to use the bright flamy stuff, and how to shape rocks to be more pointy than they'd be, and we learned that if you get wolves when they're young they think you're alpha wolf and think of the family as the pack (there is a fair amount of evidence that human evolution may have been shaped by the very act of the domestication of the dog--this occured over 100,000 years ago [and dogs are still considered Canis lupus, the same as wolves--so evolution can go REALLY fast sometimes] and some even think dogs may have given archaic "modern Homo sapiens" the edge over Neandertals). And we learned to process food, so we really didn't need big canines and big molars, because we had other ways of making food managable to eat. (For that matter, most of us aren't terribly furry, either. Again, this is thought to be because we figured out how to use animal skins and fat and the flamy stuff to keep warm, so we didn't really need the fur [and as we went north it might even have been a slight disadvantage; light skin is actually better as you can absorb more sunlight for you to synthesize vitamin D].)
And thus ends probably more about paleontology and anthropology, and its relation to the Great Diet Debate, than any of you really cared to hear.:)
Was it a slow busy or a fast busy? Generally, if the reason you're getting the busy signal is because of too many people using the phone network, rather than the line you're calling actually being busy, the busy signal tone will beep much faster.
First off, it was a slow busy (literally as if half the connection had dropped); on my end the phone literally hung up, whilst on my dad's side the line was still on (in other words, it thought it still had a connection).
Secondly, I know how Bellsouth's lines tend to behave during busy traffic periods (for example, after the tornado that hit the Mt. Washington area); you will either get a fast busy or you will get a message stating all circuits are busy (I had tried to call my folks to let them know I was ok and making sure they were ok; they live close to Brooks, where the tornado touched down, and I was in the Mount Washington area where the tornado caused F4 damage around a mile northeast of us). Same for when we had a severe snowstorm in 1994 that knocked many of the power and phone lines down (people were asked to stay off the phones, and when the circuits got too busy you either got fast busy signals or "all circuits are busy" messages).
You did not get such funkiness as the phone line hanging up across HALF the connection (which is what it literally did), tying up the phone line to an extent it was impossible to connect to the other side till te circuit finally realised it had hung up on my end. Also, the slow busys were on attempts to RECONNECT; before 7 pm EST we had made a successful call to my husband's folks, and I had begun the call to my folks just before 7 pm EST (which was when the phone hung up and I got slow busy signals).
Furthermore, we had no problems after that point in trying to contact friends whom we were visiting for New Year's, at that.
Furthermore YET, this was at 7 pm EST, not at midnight EST. Nobody reported problems before that time, and I've heard of no problems (save for some stuff with international calls over Bellsouth's circuits, around midnight EST) after that time. It was just the momentary, two-minute hork RIGHT at 7 pm EST (which would be 0000 GMT 1 January 2000); that, and that alone (well, that combined with having witnessed a lot of Bellsouth incompetence and having had to deal with it firsthand to the point that every day I pray to God/Goddess/Cthulhu/[random deity here] that someone else comes in to break Hellsouth's monopoly on phone service--been trying to get bad lines fixed out here for over a YEAR which affect my entire apartment complex AND a major mall, and Bellsouth STILL refuses to admit it's their problem) that made me suspect it could've been a Y2K burp.
I'm prolly gonna check with my sister (who works at a telco) over the next few days to see what sorta funkiness could've caused those symptoms...I've certainly never had the phone lines behave like THAT, though. Not even in Bristol, TN during fall Winston Cup racing weekend (and trust me...it is pretty damned close to impossible to place a call in or out of Bristol on that weekend...even by pay phone, much less cell phones).:P
Well, it seems the worst that happened with me and Y2K (besides the 19100 bug on several sites--right now that seems to be the most common bug, which is probably a Good Thing) was a rather odd little hiccup that occured around midnight GMT (I'm in Eastern time, btw)...
I'm calling my folks to let them know I'm off and to wish them early Happy New Year's and all that so they don't get all worried about Y2K and all.
Upon which--mysteriously--the phone hangs up. I try redialing for a good five minutes. Phone line is busy (really damn weird...because my folks have call waiting, and the LAST time the phone line gave busies there was when the tornado hit in the Brooks/Mt. Washington area just south of Louisville in 1995).
I finally get through..."Dad, did you hang up?" "No...I thought YOU hung up..." Both of us are counting this down to a momentary fart on the part of Bellsouth Kentucky, aka the one phone company in English-speaking North America that makes US Worst actually look good.:)
"Bellsouth reporting no problems", my arse.:) At least in Kentucky, I'm fairly sure the phone lines did hiccup...then again, the phone lines are generally wonky here...:)
Even Einstein knew better than to kill to live. Murder is murder.
I really hate to be the bearer of bad news to you, but unless you happen to be a member of that class of bacteria whom contain chlorophyll, your life is ultimately going to depend on the death of others. Period.
Yes, this even applies if you're a strict vegan; you end up killing a plant in some fashion (by breaking off its naughty bits and eating them [flowers and fruits; flowers are plant gonads, and fruits are exactly equivalent to an animal's uterus or the yolk-sac in an egg], by ripping its lungs and stomach out [leaves], by ripping out its mouth [roots, which absorb nutrients--which are largely from the death of other creatures--more below], or by eating the entire unborn plant [seeds, which are equivalent to eggs and/or fetuses]). Furthermore, the vast majority of plants do require organic nutrients--most of which are from:
Dead animals/plants which have decayed (read: used in part as food by bacteria and other lifeforms)
The excrement of animals and/or plants (with some plants, nitrogen is necessary; for others it's a waste product--this is why you grow corn and beans together, because it balances out in the end) which used other animals/plants in part or in whole as food.
In other words--unless you intend to stop eating at all, and stop breathing for that matter (oxygen is a toxic waste product for several kinds of bacteria, carbon dioxide is a toxic waste product for many forms of life here too) then your life--like it or not--will directly or indirectly cause the death or be the result of the death of some other life on the planet. Period. Yes, it's cruel in a way, but nobody said Mother Nature had to be nice all the time (there are times when she can be a real mother:). If you've a problem with this, I suggest one take it up with God/Goddess/the singularity at the beginning of the universe/the laws of physics which allowed DNA and proteins to form into life/[insert your favourite Moving Force of Life here].
Now...what one CAN do, mind, is make certain that the loss of life needed to sustain one's self and life on the planet causes the least amount of suffering to anyone else [for large values of "anyone" including non-human forms of life], one can try to "do good" by the life one must take to live, and one may decide not to indulge in wasteful taking of life (murder is wasteful, IMHO; then again, so is trophy hunting--if you're going to kill an animal on purpose, please, use as much of it as you can--it's only respectful). Give respect to the life you take to live, and maybe give a little bit of thanks for it (yes, I admit that I do think of the corn and pig and chicken eggs and green-beans that gave their lives so I might have food).
You can't really eliminate all killing to live, because it's kinda built into the system at this point. Death, like it or not, is an intrinsic part of life; you will eventually die (nobody likes to think of this, I know)...but your body will feed plants and bacteria and earthworms and suchlike, who'll get eaten by chickens or other birds or cows, who will in turn maybe be eaten by your grandkids (so in a weird sort of way, your own death has contributed to the survival of your grandkids because they can eat). It's all part of the cycle, and it's pretty much how things work. I think honestly the best we can do is give respect that life IS taken so we may live, and give respect to that which did give its life, and only take as much as needed and try not to be wasteful and take life besides that which we need to take to live on--which I think is entirely possible and doable, and makes sure that things don't get TOO out of whack. It doesn't help to pretend life doesn't depend on death, though.
(Yes, I know this sounds terribly morbid, but it's a subject I've been giving rather deep thought to for quite a number of years. It's something I actually hold as a sort of moral code--yes, you DO take life to live, even plants. Do good by that which gave its life so you may live, and treat humans and your fellow creatures with respect, and don't take life wastefully, and things should work out. You might even call it a bit pragmatic. I just don't see why people are so terrified of death, though, and why people seem to see taking plants' lives as different from animal lives (maybe because humans are animals too--I've just not seen anyone yelling "FRUITS AND SEEDS ARE ABORTIONS!" the same way people yell "Meat is murder!"...hell, I feel better about eating cows than about trophy hunting or fur-trapping [which I see as terribly wasteful--nobody really NEEDS fur to make clothes out of unless they're in a survival situation or in the high Arctic/Antarctic, and nobody needs to kill a deer just so one can mount its head over the fireplace]--at least most slaughterhouses use the whole darn cow down to the hooves. Admittedly, I DO go for organic beef when possible [because the moos aren't pumped fulla chemicals, and organic farming techniques tend to be kinder to the moos than factory farming], but I'm not going to delude myself in thinking eating a veggieburger or a portabella-mushroom sandwich is any less a taking of life than eating the remains of a former resident of Laura's Lean Beef Angus Farm is. In a way it kinda bugs me when people do that, because in a way they're being dishonest--if they'd just say "I don't think eating animals is respectful to the animal or good for the environment, so I've gone vegan and you should too" I'd probably not cringe so much.:)
t I'd like to know is how close is the domestic cat to the wildcat? Are they more different than the mare/zebra birth?
Actually, the kitties are closer than horses and zebras are; African wildcats and housecats are so closely related that they can have fertile offspring, and most modern nomenclature systems actually list both African wildcats and housecats as subspecies of Felis sylvestris.
Horses and zebras are farther apart--a cross between a horse and a zebra would be infertile, as horses are around as removed from zebras as they are from donkeys--and while equine evolution IS dynamic it's still farther than what was done with the kitties. (And yes, if memory serves, E.Q. (the Grant's Zebra who was birthed by the quarter horse) is still around at the Louisville Zoo; I've some friends who work there and I'll have to see if he's still there or not. He beats the kitties by at least ten years; the big deal with the cats was that frozen embryos were successfully used and it's the first time it's been successfully done in felids...big deal, too, because both big and small cats are hurtin' as far as habitat goes, and most wild cats are at the very least threatened species.)
What happened with the kitties was roughly equivalent to a dog being implanted with wolf puppy embryos and giving birth to a litter of wolf puppies (as opposed to Golden Retriever or Alaskan Malamute puppies). The level of relation is just as close (if not closer) between African wildcats and housecats as it is between Alaskan malamutes and wolves, down to the fact you can have wildcat/housecat crossbreeds that can have kittens, and for all intents and purposes housecats are domesticated, slightly retarded versions of African wildcats (much as dogs are heavily domesticated, retarded wolves).
Now, I've heard occasionally about dogs breeding with wolves. Unless that's an urban legend (quite possibly!), that would be inter-species breeding, I think.
1) No, it's not an urban legend; wolf-hybrids do exist and in fact there are actually registries for wolf-hybrids. (In most areas, there are special licensing requirements if they're over 50 percent wolf--basically the same requirements that you'd be under if you kept a full-blooded wolf--but yes, they exist.)
2) Wolves and dogs are the same species.
I'll repeat that for those of you who didn't get it--
Wolves and dogs are the same species.
Yes, I'm serious.:) Dogs and wolves (and dogs and coyotes, and if memory serves dogs and jackals) have long been known to interbreed; however, until fairly recently zoological nomenclature insisted on not only listing all these as different species but also listed "primitive dogs" like dingos as a separate species as well!
Fortunately, zoological nomenclature (specifically the ICZN) has corrected this, and ALL of these have now been sunk into subspecies of Canis lupus. Most breeds of dogs are now listed as Canis lupus familiaris (some breeds derived from "primitive dogs" like dingos, Australian cattle dogs, etc. are listed as Canis lupus dingo), coyotes have been sunk to Canis lupus latrans, red wolves (which may well be a hybrid of coyotes and wolves) are listed now as Canis lupus rufus, etc.
ObThread: For that matter, cats have been sunk too. Cats are now listed in newer versions of nomenclatures as Felis sylvestris domestica; African wildcats (from which house kitties are derived) are listed as Felis sylvestris lybica and European wildcats are listed as Felis sylvestris europeensis(?).
And FWIW, this is also NOT the first time an animal has give birth to an animal of another species. In the 1980's a horse at the Louisville Zoological Gardens gave birth to a Grant's zebra after having had the zebra embryo artificially implanted; this was specifically meant to give a way to breed more zebras, especially rare species. (The zebra who had a horse for a mom, E.Q., is (I believe) still living at the Louisville Zoo, btw. Incidentially, horses and zebras are even more distantly related than horses and donkeys; a semi-striped zebra known as a quagga (which looked a lot like a crossbreed between a donkey and a zebra) existed till humans hunted them to extinction in the 1800s. There is supposedly a captive breeding program in place in South Africa breeding quagga-like zebras to each other in an attempt to bring back quaggas (of a sort); I've also heard this same technique proposed to bring back mammoths.)
I don't mean to bash on anyone else's religion, even though mine is the Right One, but yours is out there. Cow-orking is just plain wrong. Never ork the cow.
Just how the hell does one ork cows, anyways? I've heard of cow-orkers, but I can't imagine what the hell it is...transforming cattle into big green fellas? Goblinising cattle (in the Shadowrun sense) and if so (in the Shadowrun sense) does this mean Shadowrun wendigos (aka vampy-orks) are really man-eating cattle? Getting a bunch of Da Boyz into ranching? Just how the hell does one ork cows?
I think we should be told. Maybe the Grits Boy knows...I sure as hell don't;)
Never having orked a cow, but having known more than one werecow,
GadZooki dun said: Child pornography is illegal to own, produce or sell just like narcotics. Except in your inane reply to your own banal post, my analogy works. The government doesn't need special censorship powers to remove such content, the same way it doesn't need new laws to get my crack rock. A legal warrant will do.
ObDisclaimer: I m'self don't like the idea of child porn, and strictly IMHO the government is probably in the right in banning it seeing as most child porn probably involves molesting kids in the process of making it. (Just to get that out of the way.)
As a minor aside--the definition of "child pornography" and/or "narcotics" can vary quite a bit from country to country. (Yes, I realise we're talking about the US and whether ISPs are to be considered common carriers or not. However, the Internet is an international forum, and hence anytime you talk about the Internet you are necessarily going to be talking about international agreements.:) For example, if memory serves some things which are considered kiddie-porn in the US (i.e. simulated pics of kids, teenagers, etc.) aren't illegal in parts of Scandinavia and (possibly) Japan; conversely, some stuff that is not considered illegal porn in the US (i.e. teens in bikinis, adult lesbians, etc.) IS considered illegal in other countries. Same goes for narcotics, too; qat (a common drug used in Middle Eastern countries) is illegal here in the US but actually sold on the streets legally in Ethiopia, and contrariwise most antihistamines and decongestant drugs are considered controlled substances in Japan (yes, you really CAN be busted for entering Japan with a package of Sudafed; pseudoephedrine is a controlled substance there and even the US State Department Travel Advisory for Japan warns about this).
For that matter, laws aren't all that uniform in the United States. Things which are perfectly legal in some states aren't in others; there was a very unfortunate case that proved this out several years ago (in which a postmaster general (?) in Tennessee got an adult BBS in California busted for violating Tennessee's obscenity laws with some of the piccies on the board). I'll also remind folks that the issue of "illegal sexual material" often doesn't have to do with kiddie porn at all; among other things, if a provider was held responsible for content prosecutors in Alabama could hold liable any site that sold dildos or most sexual material (yes, the sale or advertisement of marital aids is illegal in Alabama, and quite a few cities and counties in the Bible Belt have blue-laws that darn near make anything much racier than the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue illegal to sell in town; some of these are fairly large cities [Cincinatti has tried repeatedly to make ALL adult bookstores illegal as well as prohibit the sale of nearly all adult material--it ain't just Larry Flynt and Hustler they've gone to loggerheads with] at that. I won't even go into those states that still have sodomy laws on the books, because a few of those states also ban depictions of sodomy and/or "crimes against nature"...which can include literally everything from zoophilia, to oral/anal sex, to [in a few states] even consensual unmarried heterosexual sex in the missionary position...)
Personally, I think it's a damn good thing the courts ruled that a provider can't be held liable. Otherwise, a lot of ISPs and online services (cough cough ahem AOL cough ahem) would be in rather serious trouble and waiting for cops from the Fundamentalist Theocracy of Alabama to shut them down:P I'll also note, btw, that this does NOT give ISPs common carrier status...not yet, anyways. The only group that can formally do that is the FCC, who grants what services are and aren't common carriers (it is a specific status under the law which also has specific responsibilities--technically, under the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, if ISPs were declared common carriers they'd have to open up (for example) cable modem service and ADSL service to ALL ISPs at the same price and couldn't do sillybuggers like making one pay for two accounts--one with @Home and one with one's home ISP [as @Home is fond of doing] or making one pay MORE for ADSL service if one doesn't use bellsouth.net as one's ISP [which Bellsouth does, illegally I might add, in the Louisville area with its ADSL service--they actually make you pay MORE if you don't go with hellsouth.net--as if I actually needed another reason to pray to the gods of thunder that the headquarters would be hit by an F5 tornado:P]. They'd have to open it up to everyone.)
Now...what's needed now is some way to determine on a national basis where jurisdiction is when something that really IS illegal occurs. (Hell, internationally if possible, but I don't think that's happening in this lifetime:P) If someone runs a website in California which has adult material on it which is legal there--and someone in the Fundamentalist Theocracy of Alabama downloads that material--whose law applies? California's? Alabama's? (Kentucky is one of the very few states I know of that DOES list in its laws who has jurisdiction in computer crimes--it's basically [for example] if someone mailbombs you from another state the offense is supposed to have occured in that state and not Kentucky). For that matter, if I order beer from an online site (under a rather draconian law in Kentucky--meant mostly to prop up liquor warehouses and county sheriffs in dry counties--it is now illegal to mail-order ANY alcohol in Kentucky...this actually caused the famous Beer Camp at Oldenberg Brewery (in Covington, KY) to have to be cancelled last year, and arrangements made to have the beer from microbrews (some who mostly ship by mail order) to be shipped to a warehouse there...this is now literally the only way you can order beer, through a warehouse, because it's illegal to ship it:P) whose law trumps the other (especially if the online beer salesman is in a state where it's quite legal, and it'd be legal if I were driving there and shipping it across myself)? Can the other state tell Kentucky's Attorney-General to perform a auto-sexual act requiring DEX 25 when the Attorney-General decides to file a felony charge against the shipper and the company? (Yes, it's even illegal for UPS to ship--which is probably illegal, since UPS is a common carrier)
Just as a minor commentary on the appendix thread:
The real reason doctors don't ordinarily remove your appendix isn't to do with immune function (this was only recently discovered, btw; it was formerly thought to be entirely a vestigial organ from when primates evolved from insectivores--rabbits (lagomorphs, which likewise evolved from insectivores) have rather huge appendices compared to humans). It's not due to cost so much, either (most first-world and even a fair number of the second-world countries actually have free health care for citizens; the US is really freakish in that regard and is more like a third-world country in this regards).
Rather, it has to do with risks of abdominal surgery itself. The abdomen is, well, sort of a risky area to operate in to begin with; any jostling of organs risks adhesions that might end up blocking off your intestines, the appendix is attached to your colon which is chock full of bacteria that can cause some very nasty infections (and to try to sterilise the gut beforehand risks one getting superinfections of yeast or Clostridia (which can literally rot one's intestines; the bacteria are closely related to gas gangrene bacteria, and in fact in New Guinea a form of gas gangrene of the bowels known as pigbel is rather common due to people being infected with Clostridia from poorly cooked pork)...not fun), one has to be very careful in suturing the abdomen as abdominal sutures are among the most highly stressed of ANY surgical suture, etc. Even operations for appendicitis (in which the person is being operated on in hopes of removing the appendix before it bursts and causes peritonitis (basically infection of the entire abdominal wall lining; it can go into blood poisoning (septicemia) VERY quickly, can kill you, and at very best will make you desperately ill and cause you to have a hole in your abdomen for several weeks)) are risky; there have been cases where the appendix has literally exploded in the surgeon's hands, the tissues are inflamed, and often patients have to have drains placed and be put on a course of antibiotics to make sure they don't go into peritonitis anyways. Doctors don't like to muck about with abdominal surgery unless they have to, and even then as least as they can get away with (this is why hysterectomies, appendectomies, and even operations to remove cancerous sections of bowel have increasingly gone to laparoscopic surgery where they only have to make two incisions, one through the navel, instead of a large gash--it's far less stressful for patient AND doctor) and this is why appendectomy is an emergency procedure.:)
As a minor aside--it used to be fairly routine to remove adenoids and tonsils if a kid had even one bout of tonsillitis.What stopped that was the discovery that kids who had had both their adenoids and tonsils removed had higher chances of going into rheumatic fever from strep throat (rheumatic fever is fairly uncommon nowadays, but it can leave nervous system [St. Vitus' chorea] or cardivascular complications; in some cases it can even kill--Jim Henson died of essentially a very severe bout of rheumatic fever) and got more and worse respiratory infections than kids who had tonsils and/or adenoids. Now they only recommend removal if they've caused fairly severe problems with the kid to the point the child is almost always sick; it's been found it's better to leave them in than take them out.
I did an Internet search, and found several USENET postings and a couple different websites indicating that Chernobyl does indeed mean Wormwood, and nothing saying it didn't.
This canard has been going around in fundy circles for a long time--specifically, ever since Chornobyl went boom (yup, since the 80's...when the same folks were also claiming Russia was Gog and Moscow was Magog and that Gorbachev was really the Antichrist). I can also tell you that those websites probably ALL got their info from the same source (the good old fundamentalist Christian rumour mill--the same one that's been spreading the urban legends about Disney movies and Proctor & Gamble being supposedly run by Satanists for God-only-knows how long) and the claim that "Chornobyl" means "Wormwood" is patent male bovine manure.:)
A little bit of fact-finding (which is how I found it was bull, btw)--Ukrainian, Russian, Belorussian, and other "Eastern Slavic" languages are VERY closely related. So closely related in fact that often they are mutually intelligible in roughly the same manner Catalan and Castillian Spanish, or Castillian Spanish and Portugese, are.
"Chernozem" (Ukrainian "chornozem") is Russian for "black earth" and refers to a very rich, black earth that exists in Ukraine. The name "Chernobyl" (Ukrainian "Chornobyl"; the official name of the town has in fact been Chornobyl since Ukraine told Russia it was breaking away from the old USSR) means "black table" and is a direct reference to the rich chernozem earth in the area.
(Warning--massive rant about to begin on how coercive fundy groups feed their memberships stuff like this. If you don't want to hear gory details and me whinge long and pissy on it, scroll to the next message now. If you are of a fundamentalist bent, you probably will NOT want to read what I am about to say next.:)
This isn't the first time fundies have been loose with the facts, btw. Nearly all of the urban legends about Disney movies having sexual references started from one or two sources in the fundamentalist Christian community (visit here for a good reference). In Sunday school back when I was young and stupid and thoroughly brainwashed, we were told (among other things) that the CEO of NBC was a practicing Satanist, that facial creams with "placenta" contained ground-up aborted babies (yes, they actually told us this in Sunday school! And for the record, stuff with placenta contains COW PLACENTA, not ground-up aborted human babies), that the ERA would force women to be lesbians, that parents should not send their kids to Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts but instead to the fundy alternatives (Royal Rangers & Missionettes) because the Boy Scouts supposedly allowed gay Scoutmasters and promoted atheism (a patent lie--they will not even let you IN if you are gay or atheist; several lawsuits have in fact been filed AGAINST the Boy Scouts because of this), and other fun tall tales. The same church has a guy who sent out fliers to the better part of my city (large metro area of almost a million people) including grocery stores that claimed all gay men were members of NAMBLA; the church members are told this and do not question it because they are literally told to avoid ALL "non-Christian" media because the media industry outside of that run by rabid fundies is run by Satanists (!). They even give out "Christian Yellow Pages" telling them not to do business except with those of "like faith" so they won't have to deal with people who might show them they are being fed outright lies by their pastor:P (And people wonder why I say that at least some branches of fundamentalist Christianity are as bad as Scientologists. They're as coercive, in any case (as I found out being brought into the Scientology debates back when the CoS was doing major net.abuse like the Cancelbunnies instead of just suing websites into oblivion); hell, at least one Assemblies of God church (the AoG is one of your biggest fundy denominations, btw--something like two million members) was actually outed as a cult on 20/20 (the "Brownsville Movement" in Pensacola, FL) and I can testify from my experience in an AoG church and from that of others who've walked away that more often than not those churches turn dangerously coercive. Pretty much they trip EVERY one of the warning signs that have been used for Scientologists; a favourite brainwashing tool [the whole "engrams" thang] is a repackaged version of good old "deliverance ministry" [the idea that anything trying to drive you out of that church--from news reports on how it's coercive to your own inner doubts--are signs of Satanic possession and you must "pray the demons out" or "exorcise" them by force...there are verified cases where people have been driven insane or even killed in these "exorcisms", and the Scientology equivalent is widely regarded as the single most damaging aspect of it], neither Scientologists nor coercive fundy groups want their members to have any outside info at all [saying slags are being done by "subversive persons"/"agents of Satan"], both exert heavy control on members [Scientologists being encouraged to join "Sea Org", fundies being encouraged to join political groups and to homeschool their kids, send them to fundy-run colleges when possible, and using "cell groups" to basically snitch on each other to make sure members stay in control], both have lots of money...I really could go on for hours on it. I've been a walkaway for something like thirteen years now, and I'm only starting to realise just HOW coercive the group was and just HOW much bull I was fed "in the name of God". And that's from one of the biggest damn churches in the COUNTRY.:P
ObY2K: Oh, and after Russia and Iraq didn't pan out as Gog and Magog and after a succession of Gorby, Boris "Where's the Stoli?" Yeltsin, Saddam Hussein, and Bill Clinton (!) didn't pan out as the Antichrist and/or Da Source of Da Comin' Pockylipse, now they're running about saying that the WWW is going to be the source of Armageddon and Y2K is going to be the Apocalypse (they were saying earlier that the world being destroyed by fire was going to be a nuclear war between the US and Russia over Israel (!)...and they were darn near jizzing themselves over it, too...it's really sickening in a way to know that the main reason they support Israel and Jews at ALL is because they are hoping Israel will get into some kind of war which would blow the entire world to kingdom-come, and they're essentially kissing God's arse by supporting anything Israel does [up to and including human rights violations] because they want to fight on the same side as the Israelis when the last war starts because they think that no matter what Israel is "God's Team"). Myself, I'm more afraid of the fundies running about spouting that crap than I am of society falling down going thud because of Y2K, because if they don't get their Armageddon they might try to make their own (and apparently Israel is so concerned about it that they've already set up a special task force just to deal with potentially dangerous fundy Christian groups--they've already had to send three groups out of Israel so far, and it's not even December yet...and also keep in mind that most fundy groups care about Israel for only three reasons--a) because they see Israelis as "God's Chosen" and hope to be lumped in with "God's Chosen" by supporting Israel no matter what [I actually heard it preached "You support them even if they commit genocide against an entire nation"], b) they are convinced Armageddon is going to break out when Israel goes to war with another country, and c) they want to be where the action is when Jesus comes back to play General Patton to the Army of Gawd). (And yes, I think I have a valid reason for worry--as I noted above and I've noted in past, I grew up in a very coercive fundamentalist group. The group has actually argued that "good people will go to hell and bad people will go to heaven" because as long as one claims one accepts Jesus this supposedly makes things alright--and then they can have carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want to do "in the name of God". They've seriously discussed bringing back the Burning Times and expanding them to ALL non-fundamentalists [Catholics even get denounced as "idol-worshippers", and Baptists as being "lukewarm Christians who don't accept the gifts of tongues"], and in a prior "Second Coming" panic in 1988 [when some guy released a book entitled "88 Reasons Why Jesus Will Come Back In 1988"] many people lost all their money by giving it to the church. Hell, MY family has in past been in financial trouble because money was given in "tithes" and "love offerings" when it was needed for food and bills:P. The group has been known to harass and picket homes of STRAIGHT people who have come out in support of gay-rights ordinances, and for well over ten years literally made the lives of an entire neighbourhood hell when they kept trying to get in construction project after construction project so they could get in additional access roads to suck in even more people [fortunately, Mum Nature intervened by a massive flood, the Corps of Engineers declared the entire area a wetlands and 100-year flood plain where further development was prohibited, and now the church is moving out to somewhere else they hope the neighbours can be bullied easier]. Partly because they ARE being coerced and the church tries it cut off every avenue of info that it doesn't own, and partly because one of the chief tenets is essentially "If you ain't with us you're a Satanist and workin' for the devil", and they are CONVINCED they are going to go to final holy war when Armageddon does hit, I seriously worry what some members of that church might do...and that's a relatively CALM one for coercive Bible-based groups, too. I'm not even gonna go into really scary stuff like Christian Identity or the really radical groups that have set up their own "Entime Camp" communities:P)
Yes, I've heard of the hydrogen bomb. I was under the impression that most nuclear bombs are Uranium (and fission) based, as they have much more destructive power than H-bombs. Yes, I know, H-bombs were what ended WW2.
Minor nit to pick--I think you got fusion and fission bombs (aka H-bombs and A-bombs) reversed.
As I understand it, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked by A-bombs, that is, fission devices using uranium and plutonium.
H-bombs tend to be far larger, are what are generally stuck on the tops of ICBMs, and generally have only been used to blow up atolls in the Pacific (there hasn't yet been a wartime use of an H-bomb, thank God/Goddess/(deity)).
Or, to put it rather more dramatically the difference between fusion and fission:
Fission is what heats up the innards of the Earth enough for us to have stuff like plate tectonics and volcanos and earthquakes and hot-springs. (The inside of the earth is largely molten and heated by nuclear fission; Earth happened to have enough radioactive stuff when it formed to keep enough heat in to drive plate tectonics. Mars, it seems, might not have been so lucky, and the Moon didn't (it lost its heat before it ever got the chance to form volcanoes).
Fusion is what tends to drive stuff like stars. Fusion uses the light stuff like hydrogen, and if you get enough of it into a ball it'll start into fusion. Needless to say, most stars aren't going to bear anyone's weight on them; their surfaces are far too hot (the only exceptions to this are black holes and neutron stars, but those are really dead stars anyway or [in the case of black holes] maybe baby universes, so they really don't count).
So you may thank fission for Kilahuea and hot-springs and fusion for the sun.;) (This also explains why H-bombs are so much more destructive, blowing-up-wise, than A-bombs--there is a hell of a lot more energy released, and they are in a way making miniature suns that burn out VERY quickly. Fission devices (A-bombs, like Fat Boy) don't release as much energy but tend to be far "dirtier" radiation-wise, though.)
Use this method for used diapers, chicken bones, or trash that you would have to pay to get rid of! If you send a used diaper, it would be giving them a message as to what their mailing is!
No, actually, sheetrock is better than used nappies or trash. Two reasons:
1) The USPS generally will not ship stuff that can be classified as "hazardous waste". Used nappies for the most part are considered biohazardous waste, and the USPS can actually come after youif they get a complaint from the businesswankers that " sent us a bunch of used diapers".
2) The point is to make them pay SO much for shipping for a return-reply envelope that it is not going to be worth their while to ever do business with you again (much how shunning/IDPs, strong AUPs, "spam fines" at some ISPs (you pay a fine if your account is ever closed for spamming) and the MAPS-RBL are meant to make spamming more trouble than it's worth). I seriously doubt that you are going to find sixty-nine pounds of used nappies ANYWHERE short of a nursing home, a large orphanage, or a state institute for the profoundly retarded.:) (By god, if I was going to send them nappies, I'd make sure I had enough to make them pay several dollars--in the tens to hundreds of dollars, yet--to pay for it!:)
The idea of heavy packages works because a) you aren't breaking postal regs by shipping hazmat--everything is perfectly legal and binding and they HAVE to pay the shipping, and b) shipping on large packages is expensive enough to potentially hurt a mass-mailer in the pocketbook and thus deliver a 69-pound LART to the offender (postage is $19.60 for a 69-pound package from my hometown to one junk mailer for a normal parcel; around $53.79 for an oversized parcel...so make sure that in any parcels you send, the length of its longest side plus the distance around its thickest part is more than 108 inches and less than or equal to 130 inches, kids;).
(un)Fortunately, I don't get too much junk mail...mostly coupons and people persistently trying to give me credit cards (I avoid credit cards like the black plague:). This idea is just evil enough that I LIKE it, though.:)=
Two recent things on Celebration strike incredible humour with me...
1) Celebration was designed to be this nice, homogenised community of the future...and reportedly the school system is in an uproar because two groups of parents are darn near ready to go to fisticuffs over how the school system should be run and whether the style of education being done there is good or whether they should go back to a more "traditional" form of education rather than hands-on stuffle.
2) Celebration was basically built from a swamp and designed basically so humans could "rise above nature with the hope of new technology". And many people are VERY pissed because, well, it seems Celebration is now being overrun with (ironically, of all things) mice. Thousands of mice, in fact. To the point where people are trapping upwards of 20-70 mice PER DAY. The Health Board in Florida is very worried that a breakout of some nasty mouse-borne disease like Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome ("Four Corners Disease"--something like 80 percent of people who get it die, usually from suffocating in their own lung fluids...not fun). Most experts think between a swamp being drained, refilled, the massive development in the Orlando area in the past 20 years, and a rather bad turn of weather including droughts, it's driven the mice in proportions near a mouse-plague right into Celebration and other communities nearby...in other words, Walt Disney and co. helped throw things JUST out of balance enough that the "community of the future" is being overrun by *snicker* MICE.
Sone anonymous coward dun said: I agree with everything you said except this. Native Americans did not have alcohol until we came to North America. That's why there is a higher percentage of alcoholism, in europe people with bad alcoholism genes were most likely just bred out of the gene pool over hundreds of years.
As some others have noted already, I'm afraid you're rather mistaken.:)
There were no less than three separate and distinct alcoholic beverages that were developed by Native Americans some hundreds of years before silly Cristobal Colon got lost and confused Hispaniola for Indonesia.:) The first was a corn-beer which was later distilled (and the Mayas actually used to give themselves ENEMAS with this stuff in rituals); the second was mezcal (which has been mentioned several times here, and is the direct ancestor of tequila--and you can still buy the stuff in a lot of places); the third (which I'll grant is not commonly known) is a sort of fruit-beer or metheglin made from passionfruit (yes, passionfruit actually grows in the United States--bet most of you didn't know that:) known as "old field apricot drink" (I'm using the English translation) which was invented by the Cherokee some hundreds of years back which is approximately as strong as kvass (a Russian beer made from rye bread).
The Mayas and Aztecs tended to use the corn-beer and mezcal for religious purposes (the Mayas, again, even going to such measures as taking the stuff in enemas when one was puking too much to keep it down--which will also, incidentially, get one more drunk than just drinking it--it's actually been suggested in books on treatment of radiation poisoning that if one can't safely give someone an IV one could well give someone an enema of essential nutrients). "Old field apricot drink" wasn't used for any ritual purposes that I know of (it might have hundreds of years back, but there's been a fair amount of Cherokee lore that got lost thanks to assimilation + the Trail of Tears) but was used in exactly the same manner as your average white American bubba uses Bud Light--as a refresher after a hard day's work. (Kvass and "old field apricot drink" tend to have a lower alcohol level than traditional Western beers, though...the fermentation is only about a week or so.)
In Europe, the selection wasn't so much for alcoholics to be bred out (Russia has a rather severe problem with alcoholism, from what I understand, as do many countries surrounding the Arctic Circle) but for people who are efficient producers of alcohol dehydrogenase to be selected in the gene pool. This is largely because alcohol has been a large part of European culture for a long time. (I can state that your average resident of Belfast could well drink me under the table. Yes, I learned the hard way to NEVER try to outdrink an Irishman, especially since a) I happen to be part Cherokee and b) my liver hasn't gotten that much exercise and c) I weighed about half as much as said Belfastian.:)
In most other countries (with the major exception of Japan and the Middle East) distilled liquors were rarely used, and most of the native beers (yes, most cultures have some form of beer) are at or slightly lower strength than your average beer here in the States. Hence the genes for alcohol dehydrogenase weren't as strongly selected for.
You see this for stuff besides alcohol, btw; many aboriginal peoples (including Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, and if memory serves some Papuan and African populations) have considerable troubles handling the large amounts of refined sugars and carbohydrates in the Western diet to the point that they have a far higher incidence of type II diabetes than the average population. (It's especially bad among the Pima peoples in the US Southwest, of which something like 80-90% of the population is diabetic; CNN recently did a report in its health section on the health crisis in the population as a result.) There have also been reported cases (though I don't know how true this is, and I've never been able to find more than one or two sources on it so this MAY well be an urban legend) of sugar addiction among the Inuit peoples (who traditionally have not had ANY sugar in their diet, aside that from game; not even that much fructose).
Also as a fun aside--Europeans didn't invent distillation--it was invented by the Moorish peoples sometime in the 700-800s AD and later brought over...specifically by the same folks who invented algebra. (Yes, you may thank Morocco for fine Scotch and Kentucky bourbon.:) The word "alcohol" is actually derived from an Arabic term, in fact...it might be really interesting to see if alcohol dehydrogenase has been selected even more strongly for in these populations than the population at large...
(Yes, I have a slightly biased viewpoint on things. Firstly, I happen to be part Native American, specifically the folks who brought you "old field apricot drink". Secondly, I lived near a lot of people who came from the folks who brought you mezcal and tequila.:) Thirdly, I have an interest in homebrewing and would actually like to find some passionfruit juice or syrup (or preferably passionfruit itself) to try to make a version of "old field apricot drink" as a metheglin.;)
N1UGLham dun said: On the contrary, I think it could be quite useful to a large number of disabled people. There are so many things that we don't understand about the nervous system (including the brain).
I m'self think probably the most likely use for this would be for people who are paralysed as a result of nerve injury (i.e. like what Christopher Reeve did--fell off a horse, broke his neck in the process). I am not certain it'd work for neurodegenerative diseases nor am I sure it would work for stuff in the brain or that is inborn (i.e. strokes or spina bifida).
Who's to say that, for instance, that this couldn't prevent people with MS?
I myself doubt it'd work because MS is largely an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its own myelin nerve sheathings. (A rough parallel would be stripping the insulation off of an electrical cord, leaving it vulnerable to corrosion and short circuits and whatnot. The problems you get with MS are basically due to the fact the nerves are short-circuiting, and I'm not sure how a muscle-movement chip is going to help because it has to go through the nervous system at some point.)
Or possibly prevent at least the physical and damaging side of seizures for people with Epilepsy (anyone read the Terminal Man by Michael Crichton?).
It really depends on the cause and type of epilepsy. Most epilepsy is due to a lesion of unknown cause, brain injury, or severe problems with brain development (I'm thinking on the last of really bad kinds of epilepsy such as infantile spasms or Lennox-Gastaut syndrome where people can have upwards of hundreds of seizures a day and they are rarely controllable without surgery.)
The most useful kind of "chip" I could think of for epileptics is POSSIBLY some sort of "brain pacemaker" (epilepsy is caused when part of the brain, usually around a lesion, starts misfiring; yes, the concept is similar to arrythmias in the heart, and in fact the type of abnormal brain waves in infantile spasms is referred to as "hypsarrythmia"). These devices are supposedly in clinical trials for severe epilepsy. (This is also why severely epileptic kids will sometimes get half their brain removed--it removes the focus of the seizures and the kids can usually do pretty well with half a brain. This is also why most epileptic drugs (especially for status epilepticus--where one is constantly having seizures) tend to be heavy downers or tranquilisers.)
Or act as a "circuit breaker" of sorts to, for example, domestic abusers. Whenever they became enraged, the chip could immobilize their limbs, preventing them from harming another human.
I'm not really sure this is possible. Firstly, the chip would have to recognise NOT ONLY that the person is enraged but also recognise the TARGET of the rage and realise this is a person who is a victim of domestic abuse. I don't think AI is quite that good yet.:)
Besides, it still wouldn't take care of OTHER types of domestic abuse such as emotional abuse (trust me...even if an abuser can't hit you they will STILL find ways to make your life a living hell if at all possible) which probably occur along WITH physical abuse. It also doesn't take care of the fact that being an abuser is largely an emotional/behaviour disorder that is poorly understood as are ALL disorders of violence. (No, I don't think this could work for rapists either, because rape is far more of a crime of dominance and power over a helpless individual than of sex. You'd have to do some real work to get it to distinguish impulses relating to rape from impulses relating to being the "top" of a consentual BD/SM relationship.:) How does one program "consent"?)
Not to mention my aforementioned Viagra alternative.
I keep seeing people mention this and I have to chuckle. Penile hardwiring is going to be far more useful for, say, incontinence than getting a hard-on because the muscles that control the urethra are just about the only muscles IN one's penis. (Seriously. You know why cock-rings and Viagra work? Because one gets a hard-on by a rush of blood caused by stimulation of the penis. The cock-rings hold the blood in acting as a tourniquet; Viagra basically causes you to pump more blood (this is why it is Very Bad for heart patients to take Viagra). This is also why a lot of diabetic men have problems with impotence; diabetes has a tendency to destroy nerve endings ["diabetic neuropathy"] and pretty much they can't get enough of a nerve signal to get the "hard-on" message, and diabetes causes thickening of the blood and heart damage [this is why a lot of longterm diabetics are on heart medication]. And no, a penile implant wouldn't work unless you have an "on" button for them--it's the nerve endings at the END that are destroyed.) You'd do better with a combination of sensor + blood-pump near the penis.
In regards to the ease of Things Going To Hell Rights-Wise in the US:
There is actually a second way that things could go to hell. Specifically, the Constitution provides for a Constitutional Convention (or "Con-Con") to be held once the "governments" of 3/4ths of the states call for a Con-Con.
The rather scary things on this are:
1) It is unknown and there is considerable debate over whether a "Con-Con" is limited to discussion of one amendment or if the entire Constitution becomes fair game. (No procedures exist for determining which is the case--this is relevant because many states have called for Con-Cons on specific issues such as anti-abortion amendments or tax reform amendments to the Constitution.)
2) There is legal debate over whether a call for a Con-Con can be rescinded once the "government" has called for one, and most legal theory tends to lean towards the idea that Con-Con calls CANNOT be rescinded.
3) There is some question as to what constitutes approval by a government of a Con-Con--specifically, whether it is restricted to state legislatures. (Some legal theorists have stated that technically a meeting of the state governments--where representatives from each state are sent by approval of the legislature and the governor--could legally call a Con-Con due to the vague way it is defined in the Constitution.) According to whom you speak with, we are either not terribly close or dangerously close to a Con-Con being able to be held in the US. Assuming a worst-case scenario, we are approximately two states away from the legal requirements for a Con-Con being held.
In a REALLY worst-case scenario, it is entirely possible that a Con-Con could be held and a fundamentalist theocracy (or something similarly un-republican), monarchy, parliament, or dictatorship could well result (especially since the only requirements would be for the authors to show it to the states for ratification). Many feel in a Con-Con the entire Constitution is fair game.
Of course, I'd proffer that it doesn't take amendments or Con-Cons to destroy the effectiveness of a Constitution. Pure apathy, or even worse, apathy combined with a charismatic leader who is more than able and willing to whip people into a froth against the "Enemy of the Week" can wreck a constitution just as well as a Con-Con can. (Look at how most of our rights have been whittled away to "protect the children against the evils of sex and violence", or how many of our rights have been effectively destroyed between the Cold War and the "war against drugs". I'm not even going to go into how the country has gone literally so far to the right that Nixon would be considered a liberal in the modern US political spectrum...let's just say there are some rather frightening parallels to the government of Germany just before Hitler got elected Chancellor. And incidentially, Hitler was elected...)
*) Ashitaka comes from a race known as the 'ainu' (I think it was) who (in real history) died out somewhere between the 5th and 10th centuary or something. Originally, "shogun" used to be short for something that meant something like "army leader and suppresor of the Ainu". (I don't have some of my history books around, so I'm just doing it from memory)
Actually, the Ainu aren't dead. Marginalised to hell and back, yes...but they aren't extinct. There are several hundred to thousands of Ainu alive and well on Hokkaido and Sakhalin islands, trying very hard to keep their culture alive.
Oddly, the Ainu may have come from an earlier culture called the Jomon culture, which is known from pottery and (possibly) from some rather spectacular underwater monoliths off the coast of Okinawa. (The modern Japanese culture is thought to be largely a mix of Jomon and ancient Korean influences, and racially the Japanese, Koreans, and Mongolians fit in the same subdivision of Oriental peoples.) The movie does hint strongly of Ashitaka being a remnant of the Jomon people; Jomon artwork is actually shown in the beginning. (This probably counts as One Of Those Bits Of Japanese Culture Most Merkuns Wouldn't Get.;)
*) "mononoke" means something like a "vengeful ghost/spirit" - doesn't translate very well. "hime" is a name suffix which normally translates as 'princess', though in some periods it can be a bit more like 'lady'.
I'll agree it doesn't translate at all well. Gaiman hinted (in earlier discussions on the translation) that a good translation of the title could be "Shamanic Princess" (alas, there's already an anime by that name or I'm sure it would have been used).
As I understand it (and please note that my grasp of Japanese mythology isn't as good as it should be) the concept of "mononoke" is similar to both stories of the "fae-folk" in Ireland and the concept of Animal Masters in Native American mythos--at the same time. They could be helpful or angry, depending on their nature and how they were treated...in Ireland, too, faerie stuff tends to be feared because it's generally NOT nice to mess with the fae-folk (they were seen as capricious).
(minor spoiler) If one needs to put this in perspective with other mythologies one might be more familiar with, the little forest-spirits could be seen almost like pixies and it could be argued in all seriousness that San was raised by Wolf (as in big-W Wolf, as in the Animal Master sense of Wolf). It's not 100% exact, but it's as close as one is going to get and a hell of a lot closer than one'd get in most Western mythology at the least:)
*) The "wolves" are "mountain dogs" in the original
To give credit, this could be a bad translation on either side. (First off, I honestly don't know if there ever were wolves in Japan the same way there were in, say, Russia. Secondly, sometimes things get described VERY differently in other languages and a literal translation is going to be off--for example, in Lakota the word for "horse" translates literally to "mystery [magick? mononoke?;)] dog", and in several Native American languages the terms for dog and/or coyote translate to "little wolf" or the term for wolf translates to "little coyote" or "wild dog". Considering Japanese and English are as different as, say, English and most Native American languages in both the way one "thinks" in the language and in the way things are typically named, I can well see how "wolf" could come out as "mountain dog". Then again, I have minor side interests in both Japanese and Native American languages--I honestly think in some ways it'd be easier to translate from Japanese to Tsalagiyi (Cherokee) or Dine' (Navaho) or Anishinaabeg (Ojibwa) and back than it would be to translate from any of those four languages to English because the modes of "thinking" and expressing are more similar between those four languages than they are between English (which is pretty darned amazing, since all five languages are in totally separate language families that probably either evolved totally separately from each other or diverged shortly after humans developed language).:)
And yes there are good dubs. Reference Tench Muyo OVA series. considered by many to be the flawless dub.
It'd have been flawless--IF THEY DIDN'T MAKE TENCHI SOUND LIKE A DAMNED MUPPET! "This is Kermit dee Juraian Prince speaking..." I swear the voice actor sounds like Kermit...I literally can't watch the dub without laughing my arse off because of this, and nobody else I know can, either.:3
On the other hand, if any of you want to know what a Louisville accent sounds like...Ryoko in the dubs sounds dead like she should be from Louisville, or at least SOME part of the South...but she sounds more like Louisvillians than, say, Tennesseans or people from central or Eastern Kentucky...just a twinge of twang there...
And now for something semi-unrelated to dubs, but related peripherally to Tenchi. Anyone who hates Micros~1 or even dislikes them really needs to get a copy of "Pretty Sammy" volume 2 (subbed or dubbed, don't matter none) and watch it. It is, very possibly, one of the most savage parodies of Micros~1 I have ever seen--about the only things changed are involvement of Sasami as a magical princess (taking the piss of Sailor Moon) and names changed to protect the guilty.:)
And I STILL think Apple ripped off the design of the I-Book from Washu's laptop in the Pretty Sammy series;)
Webslacker dun said: Oh, and another great from Studio Ghibli is Grave of the Fireflies. Roger Ebert said it was the only animated movie that ever made him cry.
"Only animated movie that ever made him cry", HELL. Trust me when I say you don't want ANY sharp objects around (or even dull ones capable of causing self-injury) when watching "Grave of the Fireflies", especially the last 45 minutes or so. (I'm not going to say why, because this would constitute a major spoiler warning--let's just say that the movie occurs near the end of WW II in Japan and snowflakes don't occur in summer, and leave it at that.) It is a HORRIBLY depressing movie, though not without good reason...
Me, well, I'm still kinda pissed/whingy that the closest theatre to where I live that is showing "Princess Mononoke" is OVER THREE HUNDRED MILES AWAY *sob* *wail* *howl at moon* *rending of clothing and donning of sack-cloth and ashes ensues*. So I have to now pressure y'all who ARE near major market areas that are showing it to go see "Princess Mononoke" if I have any hope of seeing it come to theatres in Louisville instead of waiting for over a year for it to come out on DVD.
Trust me, you want to see this movie . One, it is positively beautiful and from what I've heard they've not farged the dubbing up (Gaiman is just about the only person alive that I think could pull it off, but from what I've heard he's done it). Secondly, 235 million Japanese can't be wrong (it literally was the most popular movie EVER in Japan until Titanic--I'm up for starting a posse to feed Leonardo DeCaprio to the inugami;). Thirdly, I promise you all it is nowhere near as suicide-inducing as "Grave of the Fireflies" (yes, there are tear-jerker scenes, but not the "gods, this is so sad I think I'm going to kill myself" kind--the good kind of tear-jerker). Fourthly, if you don't see it and it doesn't come to Louisville, I will make it my personal mission next Halloween to dress up as San and get a large club and personally beat living hell out of each and every Slashdot reader who was within 50 miles of a market showing "Princess Mononoke" and didn't see it (yes, I want to see the movie THAT badly, no, I don't have enough money for a 600-mile road trip or I'd be going on one my own bloody self, and YES, I'M DEADLY SERIOUS ABOUT HOW THIS MOVIE BETTER COME TO LOUISVILLE THEATRES, DAMNIT:)=.;3
(As a minor aside, something tells me that Miramax/Disney won't be bringing over "Grave of the Fireflies". I am not certain Disney wants the larger part of its adult audience to commit suicide.:) Though it might make a REALLY nice Christmas present to Michael Eisner:)=
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In a way, I'm rather bemused by all the talk of wired dorms, and people being required to stay in dorms their freshman year...
At the university I attended (University of Louisville), you literally cannot get campus housing, period, if you live within thirty miles of the campus--so in essence, if you live ANYWHERE in Jefferson County, KY you can't get campus housing. The CLOSEST one can hope to get to campus housing is a co-op (read: indentured slavery) program with UPS for housing near UPS as long as one does co-op work for Oops Inc. :P
AFAIK the dorms at U of L are probably not wired, either (of course, we poor city-students would never know that...we aren't allowed dorms, because they are short of dorm space to the point where many houses are rented out for student apartments near the campus...)...then again, it IS a state university that seems to concentrate on its athletic program to the detriment of what was once one of the better engineering schools in the US (Speed Scientific School)...
Fortunately, the school has X-terms damn near everywhere in the Speed School areas :) so most folks just hop on the X-terms...
Then again, Louisville isn't particularly wired at all, though. Even though we have no less than three big ISPs in the area, one which is supposedly going to be a backbone site soon, the fastest options are Insight@Home (which as we all know, @Home is about to be UDPd because their abuse department mail goes to /dev/null, so THAT sucks) and HellSouth ADSL (which can only be installed if you are less than 5 miles from a switching station, and if there is no fiber between you and the switching station, and only if you are running Win95/98 or MacOS 8, and only if there is no "old copper" between you and the switching station, and only if you are willing to pay $400 for installation and $80/month (regular line cost of $20/month + $60/month for ADSL), and only if you are willing to pay MORE per month if you don't want to use Hellsouth.net [in Louisville they actually charge you MORE if you want to go with one of the local ISPs that support ADSL like iglou.com--and the average cost of ISPs here is around $17.50-$20.00/month, but Hellsouth specifically charges extra if you don't want to use Hellsouth.net], and only if the stars are right and you are willing to give your firstborn child...). The cable, we're fucked on till 2006 (because our beloved city and county officials [NOT] signed exclusive monopoly agreements with what was then Storer Cable for 25 years, and the cable franchises run out respectively in 2002 and 2006 (if memory serves) so we can't get anyone else to get cable service from) and with ADSL we're as badly and permanently fucked as anyone unfortunate enough to be in Hellsouth country (they charge out the arse so they can sell frac-T1 lines; they have pretty well locked everyone else out of the local residential phone market by charging telcos the same rates they would charge businesses to lease lines (which are among the most expensive in the US, and which make it literally impossible for ANY company to provide local phone service cheaper than Hellsouth unless they lay the line directly to one's house) and do other crap like charging MORE if you don't want to go with Hellsouth because you have an ISP already [so it's the same crap as you'd have dealing with Insight@Home, except it is far likelier that you can actually get Insight@Home installed and running] and illegally offering data services before they've even opened up the local phone monopoly (which I don't see them doing until a) someone who can lay lines like Sprint comes in, b) a class-action lawsuit is filed against Hellsouth, or c) the FCC finally gets the cojones up to give Hellsouth the spanking it so badly deserves)...).
(Did I mention that monopolies in general truly suck and actually DECREASE options for consumers? I pray every day that someone comes in to break the phone monopoly (and I don't care whom--Sprint, Unidial, two kids with cans and a string--I ain't choosy at this point) so I don't have to deal with the heap of incompetence that makes US Worst actually look GOOD that is Hellsouth, and so I don't have to wait for @Home to be spanked into submission and them having to open the cable up without making me pay for @Home as an ISP as well as a cable feed (I have my own local ISP, thank you, and I'd rather use them, thanks)...)
Delmoi dun said:
You can say that again... :)
First off, minor nit to pick--many (if not most) paleontologists are now firmly convinced that birds in fact are dinosaurs, specifically theropods (in fact, on lists that discuss dinosaurs, it is not uncommon to hear folks talk about "avialan theropods" [aka birdies]). This is because of a lot of fairly recent research into the matter (most of it only in the last ten to fifteen years, and possibly the most spectacular evidence only started coming to light around two years ago).
To give a good example of how the line gets real blurry...most paleontologists and others list Aves, that is, birds, as theropods closer to Archaeopteryx than to other dinosaurs. Well, there's now been found a wee problem with that--the closest relatives to Archaeopteryx turn out to be dromaeosaurs like Utahraptor and Deinonychus and Velociraptor, enough that some paleontologists want to make archaeopterygids and dromaeosaurs part of the same family. :) (This is partly from a lot of transitional fossils--which I'll get into in a bit--and partly because it's been found fairly recently that archaeopterygids have little sickle-claws on their feet and their body structure in general is amazingly similar to dromaeosaurs in general.)
Even worse, dromaeosaurs are actually younger in the fossil record than Archie is--there is the very real possibility that dromaeosaurs, which have traditionally been classified as dinos and NOT as birds, are actually secondarily flightless descendants of archaeopterygids or at the very least a sister group that evolved from a common ancestor.
The fact that a fair number of transitional fossils appearing to be transitional between Archie and dromaeosaurs (such as Rahonavis and some others) doesn't help, nor does the fact that it seems sicle-claws may have been a fairly common trait among early birds and dromaeosaurs.
It further yet doesn't help matters in sorting it out that feathers can no longer be used as a diagnostic characteristic of birds. For something like two years now, we have known about some amazing finds of dinosaurs with feathers (Greg Paul and Bob Bakker, who drew dinosaurs like Deinonychus and Compsognathus with feathers, were right all along and Jurassic Park was dead wrong with bare-nekkid dromaeosaurs)...the first non-avian dinosaur with protofeathers being Sinosauropteryx (thought to be a compsgnathid), Caudipteryx (thought now to be a basal oviraptor--incidentially, oviraptor clutching behaviour has now been proven in fossils--there is a fossil Oviraptor discovered that was covering its eggs exactly like a mother chicken), Protoarchaeopteryx,Archaeoraptor, and many others...the new Chinese dino fossils are really setting paleontology on its ear and pretty much have clinched that birds are theropods after all...
Which leads to one of the newest fossils found at the Chinese digs, Sinornithosaurus. This little fella is incredible--if he'd been found without the feathers he'd probably been classified as Velociraptor mongoliensis. But it was found with feather impressions, and so it is now recognised as the first definite feathered dromaeosaurid. (Yes, that's right. This proves, indirectly, that nearly all dromaeosaurs probably had feathers...I'll admit that seeing Deinonychus all naked BOTHERS me...if it's that bloody close to Archaeopteryx then by the gods it should have proper feathers, damnit! :) There's a neat little reconstruction of it at National Geographic's website, where a feature was done a few months back on the Chinese fossil dig (which is turning out to be giving stuff as amazing as the early discoveries of Archaeopteryx...which is only appropriate, as its cousin Deinonychus was the dino that first made men think (well, since the 1800's anyways) that maybe dinosaurs weren't slow and stupid :).
There are some other examples that muddy up the waters for birds, too...one group that was once thought to have spawned wading-birds is now recognised as the first radiation of ducks (chadriiforme ducks) and then there were the phorusracids...large, flightless birds that existed till around two million years ago in South America, which redeveloped fingers and sickle-claws as they became ground predators, just like their ancestors 70 million years ago (yes, even after toothed birds became extinct, there were still enough non-avian theropodian traits that a "neo-neo-theropod" could evolve in phorusracid birds...)...so often things aren't as cut and dried as we like them to be. I think it's neat as hell, though :)
(OK, so I have just a WEE bit of passing interest in theropods, especially dromaeosaurids. Partly because I like to draw 'em on occasion (to the point of having done a "furry" pic of a feathered dromaeosaurid ;) and partly because I think they're bloody neat animals. I also admit the idea of the momma-cardinal that visits my bird feeder being a dinosaur is neat; I'll also dare anyone who witnesses a mob of sparrows fighting over a bird-feeder to deny birds are dinosaurian :)
Tim Behrendsen dun said:
Well, I don't know about other Slashdot readers, but in my case it happens to be from hard experience.
You see, for the first twenty-five years of my life I grew up in a family that was in what may best be described as a "Bible-based cult"--one which also happens to be one of the largest churches in one of the largest fundamentalist "Christian" denominations worldwide (if you must know, it's the exact same denomination that the "Brownsville Movement" in Florida--which was actually exposed nationwide as being a Bible-based coercive group--is in; it's the same denomination that the vast majority of televangelists and Religious Reich heads are in; it's a little denomination based out of Springfield, MO, and it has two million members alone in the US; from what I've been able to find out after walking away over ten years ago, the entire denomination is rife with problems of both individual churches and the denomination as a whole going outright coercive, sometimes with deadly results--several people have died in "exorcisms" in past [deliverance ministry, which is basically "all of your doubts about the church and anything trying to drive you off the path are the results of demons, anyone who's against us is obviously demon posessed, and you have to pray the demons out even if it's with another person and you're exorcising someone against their will"] in this denomination).
Said Bible-based cult also happens to be one of the larger churches where I live, and pretty much RUNS the Religious Reich's political wing in my state (Kentucky, if you're curious).
I still get teh willies thinking back on stuff before I walked away, when they were preaching stuff in Sunday school like "the head of NBC is a Satanist" or "Don't use stuff with placenta in it because it contains ground up aborted babies" or "It's going to be a good thing when nuclear war breaks out, because we'll be up in heaven laughing as all the sinners fry" and practically going to orgasm when the Cold War threatened to turn hot (or later, during the Gulf War--they were convinced Saddam Hussein was going to start Armageddon--or later yet, with the Y2K crisis). I shudder when I realise that the folks who are saying this only support Israel because they think that if they kiss enough arse they'll be fighting with them when the End comes, and if it weren't for the fact they believe a war with Israel being involved is going to start the war to end all wars they wouldn't give a shit...they also claim ANY environmental help is "nature worship" and have actually stood up and said it is man's "duty to subdue the earth and use all her resources, and we don't need to worry about preserving things really because the Rapture is going to be Real Soon Now and we'll get a new heaven and new earth anyways"...
And I get downright scared when I realise that it's these folks who are one of the biggest groups that DO vote consistently (because to them, voting is a literal Jihad--a righteous struggle to turn America into a theocracy)...and largely because they are told not to read ANY mainstream media (the better to isolate them, my dear, and allow Preacher Man to feed them ever larger amounts of horsecrap) these people are utterly convinced they are doing the right thing.
Part of the reason it's my big bugaboo is I walked away from that shite, and I'm not about to let them drag the whole of America into what I walked away from because I realised it reeked to Hell and back and generally would NOT be something that Jesus would exactly approve of IMHO. I grew up with it for 25 years, and I know a lot of what exactly the Religious Reich DOES have planned for the US, and I can say in all truth that it is not something I would wish on my worst enemy and it is something that even would make the book "The Handmaid's Tale" pale in comparison (btw, I consider that one of the scariest books I've ever read--because I know all too well how it CAN happen here, and mostly by people not giving enough of a damn to stop it).
Now, as for welfare--I'll agree not everything has been run right. I also don't think it should be taken away entirely (especially considering that most people on welfare are single moms and/or poor families--who, by and large, aren't popping out "welfare babies" but have had crappy luck--many of which WANT to better themselves). One thing I think could SERIOUSLY help get people off welfare is raising the minimum wage (right now, a mother with kids actually makes more on welfare than in a typical job if she's unskilled; she also gets Medicaid and state help for doctors for her kids, which she loses if she gets a job most of the time; most of the training programs for single moms going to "workfare" in Kentucky seem to be for child-care [which pays exactly jack] instead of skilled jobs like, oh, IS or even data entry where she might actually make seven bucks an hour at UPS rather than $5.15...). Sometimes folks DO need extra help, and I don't think the churches can be relied on to give it (without strings--if I ever ended up homeless, I think I'd be well and truly screwed; most homeless shelters are run by church groups that basically make you hear a sermon for bedding and food :P...I'd not want to go through that, because I'm a walkaway and even now discussion of Christianity period is painful to me...I've been religiously abused, and you might say I still have a bit of post-traumatic stress disorder about the whole thing :P).
Speaking of homelessness, here's a nice couple of statistics for you: A fair number of kids on the street are kids who have had to leave their households because of fear of physical, mental, sexual, emotional, and/or spiritual abuse. It is estimated that a fair number of these kids are gay kids who escape fundy households; gay kids in fundy households have the single largest suicide rate of ANY group, even above other gay teens [which in and of themselves have the largest suicide rate of any teen group] as well as the largest rates of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse...many of those kids either suicide or run away in an effort to prevent abuse that is almost to the point of unmaking what those kids are inside.
Another fun statistic: Most "Bible-based coercive groups" (using the definition that most groups use now--it is basically a checklist of behaviours--you can find copies on any Google search on "coercive groups") tend to fall into smaller denominations of fundamentalist groups in the US. (In fact, the vast majority are breakaway denominations, or breakaways of groups that broke away from, four denominations: the Methodists, the Assemblies of God, the Church of Christ, and the Church of God; even some churches in the last three denominations have had problems with coercive practices.) Many of these groups are the fastest growing churches in the US, and some of them are also among the largest; they are also by far the most politically active, and even denominations considered traditionally mainstream have been taken over by fundies (most notably the Southern Baptist Convention, formerly a right-moderate church; fundamentalists swept the elections some years ago and have enacted a massive purge that has led to several churches outright being forced to leave as well as the dismantling of the only social works college in the world [at the Seminary]--literally everyone who is a moderate or who has had truck with the moderates is being run out, and there's very serious talk of a split of the entire Southern Baptist Convention over the mess; if things continue one may have to eventually list the Southern Baptists as a bible-based coercive group, because they're starting to use the same coercive techniques as other coercive groups :( ).
Another fun statistic: The hardest group to walk away from is the Scientologists; the second hardest tend to be Bible-based cults (because most people don't think of "Christian" churches being coercive in the same way Scientologists are; even though the church I walked away from uses every single technique Scientologists do, and some others which are harmful [like "shepherding"/"cell churches" where the church members are divided into groups of five to basically "keep watch" over each other and make sure they don't stray from church doctrine--which makes it very difficult to walk away]). Spiritual abuse, by and large, is STILL not taken seriously by child protective services, largely because most social workers have never been taught about it.
Another fun statistic: Children who are raised in coercive groups who do not walk away by their early teens generally don't walk away, period. Chances are far better if they joined in late childhood or in their teens; there are literally no statistics on walkaways who walked away from a coercive group they were raised in (or who have family members in the group across several generations) because it is literally so rare an occurence that reliable statistics can't be done. Most kids who walk away from coercive groups their family is in either suffer severe abuse, end up suicidal, end up running away, or end up involuntarily committed to some "training center" designed to literally brainwash the kid [this is doubly so for gay kids in fundy households, who are often involuntarily outed and "exorcised", or sent to "reparative therapy" (an aside--"reparative therapy" is psychotherapy designed to "cure" someone of being gay--it has almost a 100% failure rate, the two founders of possibly the largest fundy group pushing reparative therapy {Exodus} have now admitted it doesn't work {and are a happy gay couple besides}, and the American Psychiatric Association {which hasn't recognised being gay as a "disorder" for well nigh over 25 years} has condemned it as being potentially VERY destructive to one's psyche)].
Home schooling programs have also gone way up. Something like fifty to sixty percent of homeschool groups and sources for curriculum are fundy-controlled; most fundy homeschool groups use the "A-Beka" curriculum which is the same one used in fundamentalist-run parochial schools. (Those of you who are going shopping for homeschool stuff may want to be VERY careful as a result.) Most of the folks pushing homeschooling are fundies, to the point a fundamentalist college has opened up for homeschooled youth to train them to be political candidates for the Religious Reich (no, I am not making this up). Basically to keep them locked away forever so they never question or doubt...never have the chance to walk away.
I dare say that by the time things are said and done, we'll find probably that liberalism and conservatism have destroyed an equal number of lives--at the hands of the fundies at either end, at that. It's only now coming out how much harm has been caused by religious abuse, for example, much like how in the 70's people only started to see the harm of welfare without training programs and an increase in living wages.
Tim Beherendsen dun said:
Liberal? United States media in general? Liberal?
*sound of yours truly ROTFLMAO*
Just in case you didn't know:
The media in the US may best be described as right-wing moderate. The US (both in government and in media) is, by far, the most conservative (in the "right-wing" sense) in the Western world; even Canadian and British media are more liberal (and the Brits seem to whinge on how things have gone more conservative--listen, please don't whinge to ME on it unless they take off the watershed hour, stop allowing shows taking the piss of the priesthood, stop allowing barenekked women, and stop allowing you to say "fuck" and "shit" on British TV--NONE of which we in the States would EVER be able to get away with--a friend from Belfast was actually SHOCKED at how conservative American media is, and he's from a part of the world where people are trying very hard to kill each other over which flavour of Christianity is best :P).
America has swung so far to the right over a period of 25 years that, if Richard Nixon were alive today and running on the platform he ran on in his last election, he would be considered a liberal in America's present political climate. (No, I am not making this up. The scary thing is, Richard Nixon was considered an arch-conservative in his time.)
The United States is (and yes, I know some of you will accuse me of fearmongering and all, but I think I have grounds to say this--considering I grew up around psychofundies for 25 years of my life) precariously close to joining the rest of the countries that are more conservative than the US--that is, becoming a theocracy (just in this case a "Christian" one rather than an "Islamic" or "Jewish" one). The UnChristian Coalition has effectively taken over the political apparatus of the Republican party in over thirty states; even more frighteningly, other Religious Reich groups are also involved (most notably branch groups of the American Family Association--the selfsame group trying to censor public library feeds under its branch group "Family Friendly Libraries"), they are now trying to go for the Reform Party as well, and the US Taxpayers Party (which is, for all intents and purposes, a fundy-"Christian" political party that also has links to nastier groups yet like "Christian Identity" [who spout the canard that the US is the real "Chosen Nation", that the Jews are just faking at being Jews, and who think all non-white people should be "ethnically cleansed"], and has as part of its platform the establishment of a fundy theocracy in the US [many of the party leaders are "Christian Reconstructionists", who preach the canard that the Founding Fathers really meant the US to be a fundamentalist theocracy and who even want to restore Leviticus-style punishments such as mandatory stoning for being gay or sassing your parents]) has gotten on the ballots in a frightening number of states.
The swing to the right has been both among Republicans and Democrats, and can be attributed largely to fundy groups pressuring both parties (the Religious Reich is really one of the best-funded groups in the US; several Fortune 500 CEOs, such as the head of Coors, the head of Wal-Mart/Sam's Club, and the head of Amway have sat or do sit on the board of the Coalition for National Policy, a secretive "think tank"/planning committee of the Religious Reich), as well as pushing for cuts in taxes and calls to "protect the children" which the fundies are all too welcome to take advantage of. (Here's something I bet you didn't know: You know why fundies push so much for vouchers and school funding to be cut? Part of the actual "party line" for the Religious Reich is to eventually get rid of public schools altogether and FORCE people to go to religious schools--because they know damn well that if they can get the kids young it is unlikely they will walk away [especially from the groups that use coercive tactics, and "Bible-based cults" are the single largest group in the US using coercive tactics aside from the Scientologists].)
Just about the only time media DOES show any sort of liberal bias or even moderate bias is if the owner has some sort of pet project (Turner, for instance, has environmental issues as a "pet project"). Otherwise, things are geared towards big business, the conservative leaders, and calls to "protect the children". (I, for one, worry about the news swinging even FARTHER to the right; AOL has been known to censor the word "breast" even in discussions of breast cancer, as well as have other objectionable practices in censoring chat-rooms and the like [and it doesn't bloody well stop the people trading porn on AOL, trust me].)
The other thing that worries me is this--Most media is owned by three or four large corporations nowadays. As someone noted, they can literally make or break elections (I strongly suspect this is why third parties have such a hard time in the US; they never even get the airtime to discuss platforms and thus never get to be in debates, etc...you'd honestly think the Green Party would get press, seeing as Ralph Nader is head, but most folks don't even know the US HAS political parties besides Republican, Democrat, Reform, and maybe Libertarian). Combine that with the fact that on average, only 25-50% of registered voters vote in elections.
I keep thinking the last time things were set up like that and the last times a nation had such a massive rush to the right...were Afghanistan, Iran, and Germany in the early 30's...one group having so much control over anything is a Bad Thing in my opinion, and I'm naturally distrustful of it.
But by any means, the US media is NOT liberal. Ask your friends outside the US just how liberal it is (as long as they aren't from an Islamic nation, nearly all will tell you it isn't liberal at all, and I'd be willing to put money on it--and the only gambling I do, period, is on the horses at Churchill Downs on Derby Day and on the Powerball when it hits $50 million :) so it can't be said I'm a gambling fool :)
The Original Bobski dun said:
Actually, if US-based teletext is the same thing as "text mode" on modern closed-captioning equipped TVs (all TVs with diagonal screen measurements of 13 inches or larger built since 1993 must have built-in CC by law; every CC-equipped TV I've ever seen has the "text mode" in CC along with regular mode, and usually two to four channels of both regular and text mode per TV channel at that) then not only is it not dead but has sort of been blended in with CC in general.
The largest use in most areas for "text mode"/US teletext seems to be in program listings for the hearing impaired (I know ABC occasionally lists these in text mode); in Kentucky, the public broadcast system works with University of Kentucky ag-school and county extension offices in running AGTEXT which is a full system for providing agricultural info (everything from weather to stockyards prices to insect infestation alerts to farming tips) on KET stations. (I discovered it accidentially on Louisville's main KET affiliate when I got a TV with CC [when they were first requiring them by law] and was playing about with the different modes--and was quite suprised to see the teletext in text mode on WKMJ-68 :)
I don't know if anyone else is doing anything similar to AGTEXT anymore, but I'd imagine so in states which are still largely rural and also have statewide public broadcast networks and/or big ag-schools like UK has. I think AGTEXT is neat as hell, anyways :)
M.o. dun said:
Well, if memory serves, teletext in Europe has a lot more services besides closed captioning--for example, complete program listings, newspaper/news reporting feeds, online shopping on some systems, etc. (Comparing closed captioning in the US to teletext services is a lot like comparing, say, computerised news services to a full-featured BBS system or multimedia-enabled web site. Europe uses it FAR more extensively than we do.)
This is not to say that teletext-type systems are COMPLETELY unknown in the US (I'll give an example of one in a bit), but part of it is that Europe has dedicated the bandwidth for it for some time. In the US, if memory serves, text services including closed captioning are carried on the 21st or 24th line of the 525-line NTSC signal, which is not a hell of a lot of room to stick stuff.
SOME teletext-type stuff besides closed captioning does exist in some areas, though. ABC stations carry program schedules sometimes on the text mode of a closed-caption signal (yes, with closed captioning there are two different modes and anywhere from two to four channels in each mode--regular closed caption mode and "text" mode which is essentially stripped-down teletext--yes, Slashdot readers (at least in the US) can test this on any TV made after 1993 or so with a 13" screen or larger--federal law mandates now that all TVs 13" screen or more have closed-captioning built in, and all of 'em have the text mode, even the cheap-arse models :). Some other stations will do this too, and on the other channels of text or regular CC mode may have captioning in other languages (I'd expect most stations in Miami to offer closed-captioning in Spanish too).
Possibly the neatest use I've seen for "text mode" in US-style closed captioning is how The Kentucky Network or KET, our statewide PBS network, does an agricultural teletext service called AGTEXT in cooperation with the University of Kentucky's agricultural school...basically has weather info, stockyards reports, agricultural hints, agricultural-related weather, etc. In the Louisville area it can be picked up on WKMJ-68 (KET 1; channel 13 on Louisville-area Insight Cable) on channel-1 text mode; I'm pretty darn sure the other KET affiliates statewide (with the exception of KET-2 (WKPC-15) in Louisville, which was formerly an independent PBS affiliate till they were bought out by KET--yes, we actually have TWO public broadcasting channels in Louisville, with different scheduling and double the Britcoms :) also carry the AGTEXT teletext feeds.
I'm not aware if anyone else is doing the AGTEXT thing or similar feeds like how is done in Kentucky, but it'd be very interesting to find out just what CAN be found on other channels/text mode across the US and Canada...maybe a list ought to be done. :)
Some anonymous coward dun said:
A few minor corrections to your post:
1. Modern humans don't have fangs most of the time, yes (some of us excepted--I, for one, am one of those humans with pointy canines :)=. Older hominids did, though. For that matter, the average molar size of humans has decreased radically, too; early members of Homo including archaic Homo sapiens have molars that are literally twice as wide as in modern humans. Most anthropologists think the reduction in molar size is due to both a) humans learning to process food and b) the fact that, at least in terms of proportion of body parts, humans tend towards "juvenile ape" proportions (in other words, the proportions of our body like head-to-body ratio, the size of our teeth, etc. are more like juvenile apes than the typical "grownup" ape).
2. I think you've got the thing with the gut sizes reversed (it's ok; you aren't the first to have done it, and you aren't the first on Slashdot either to have done it :). Basically, the rule of thumb is that obligate carnivores have short guts, and obligate herbivores have long guts and often specialised parts of the gastrointestinal tract to deal with grasses.
For example, ruminant animals like cows (which are obligate herbivores) have the famous "four stomachs", and intestines over 100 feet long (humans have maybe thirty feet of intestine). Rabbits also have longer intestines, part of their digestion occurs in their appendix, and they are actually coprophagous (they cannot get all the nutrients the first time around, so--and yes, I KNOW this sounds disgusting--they eat their own poo...this is probably because lagomorphs split off from rodents [which are, largely, grain-eaters with tendencies towards being omnivores] fairly recently evolutionarily speaking). Cats, which are obligate carnivores, have teeth which are VERY poorly adapted to eating plants (they are unable to chew--for an example of this, give a kitty cat-grass [available in most pet stores]. Kitty will drop about half of it on the floor because kitty's molars are really good at cutting but suck at CHEWING the cat-grass), have shorter guts than humans (yes, this applies even for big kitties like tigers and the like--if memory serves, pumas have maybe ten feet of small intestine compared to twenty-one feet in humans), and are so adapted as to actually be taurine-dependent (they can no longer synthesize taurine and must get it from meat; otherwise they get fatty heart degeneration and die).
Oddly, humans fit almost exactly in the middle here--as do most great apes, and dogs too (believe it or not, dogs are omnivorous--this shows up more with smaller dog-family members, like foxes, but unlike cats dogs CAN live on vegetable matter; dogs can also still chew, unlike cats). More on great apes and how they fit in in a bit; for now, suffice it to say most apes are in fact omnivorous with the exception of the gorilla (gorillas ARE largely vegetarian, and also have huge guts and a lot more intestine than most apes--that's why they have big bellies compared with orangutans, chimps, and non-obese humans), and the main adaption we have to ANY specialised feeding cycle is that, like most apes, we have to get vitamin C from an external source like citrus fruit (primates are vitamin-C dependent like cats are taurine-dependent; it is probably a primate adaptation to being an animal that eats a lot of fruit in the wild, and most non-primate animals can synthesize vitamin C and do not require an outside dietary source).
3) Now, we're going to get into an area that might be a bit controversial. :) Those of you who are creationists may interpret this as God using the chimps as a design template or as a practical joke; it's up to you. I'm mostly going to be speaking in terms of good old Darwin and Gould here, so don't get TOO offended. :)
The simple fact is (according to all we know from paleontology, anthropology, and genetic phylogeny studies) that Homo sapiens can rightly be considered one of the great apes, and the main reason we don't is we don't like to think of ourselves as mutant chimps :). The branch of the great apes that led to humans, chimps, and bonobos split off around five million years ago or so; gorillas split off around ten million years ago, orangutans a bit before that, and the ancestor of all apes split off around fifteen million years or so ago. We are pretty sure that the ancestor of apes was omnivorous or (probably) fruit-ivorous (mostly eating fruits and leaves), like most primates, and supplementing its diet with the occasional animal or termites or whatnot.
As noted above, humans' closest relatives are chimps and bonobos. Chimps, bonobos, and the ancestor of Ardipithecus (the likely ancestor of Australopithecus, and now regarded as probably being the first hominid) started to split from one another around four million years ago or so. Chimps and bonobos are omnivorous; they will literally eat anything they can get their hands on, and both will forage for plant and fruit foods and kill animals on occasion for food [yes, hunting is actually documented among both chimps and bonobos--yes, it is done for food]. Chimps and bonobos also eat some foods most Western humans go "ooh, icky" at (termites) and--interestingly enough--have been proven to even have early signs of culture in that different troops have different preferred foods and different "traditional" ways of preparing foods (including different tool sets) which are clearly learned behaviours. There is also evidence chimps also teach baby chimps in troops about different medicinal plants (yes, it has been documented that chimps DO self-medicate).
Genetically, humans are not terribly far removed from chimps (even taking into account four million years of separation). We share something like 98 percent of genetic code, for starters; we are literally more closely related to chimps and bonobos than any of the three are related to gorillas (our next closest "great ape" relative). Humans have 46 chromosomes; chimps have 48. (It's going to be really interesting to see the in-depth comparisons that can be done between chimps and humans once a) the Human Genome Project is finished and b) someone does a Genome Project for the other great apes. :) There is some evidence that humans and bonobos might be closer than humans and chimps (though chimps and bonobos are still more closely related to each other).
Chimps, bonobos, and hominids are pretty well adapted to omnivorous lifestyles. With the exception of modern humans (and most anthropologists agree that modern humans are an abberation--this is probably a juvenile trait that has survived precisely because we process our food) they have both big carnivores to rip flesh, AND big molars to grind food. (In fact, Australopithecus had huge molars, bigger than ours in fact. It also had bigger canines.) In the wild they are penultimate omnivores that survive by hunting and gathering (from chimps to human societies that still survive by hunting and gathering).
Now, I will grant that most human societies and most apes don't eat as much meat as Western society does. (There are exceptions, though; Inuit peoples have survived often on nothing BUT meat and some berries, because there is little plant food to be found in the Arctic regions.) It's not a matter of humans not being designed to eat meat, though; in fact, they are designed to eat meat AND vegetables, and in fact to be partially obligate to being both meat-eating AND fruit-eating animals (vegans have to do a LOT of balancing to get enough B vitamins in a diet, and as mentioned before all primates are vitamin-C obligate). We were designed to eat meat every bit as much as chimps and bonobos are, and chimps and bonobos DO go out and kill animals for meat on occasion.
The main reason humans do eat so much meat--and for that matter, why hominids over time lost big canines and lost big grinding teeth that exist in the other great apes--is, because we learned to walk on two legs for longer periods than bonobos do, we got really good at making and using tools (better than the other two branchces of the chimp family, anyways). We eventually figured out how to use the bright flamy stuff, and how to shape rocks to be more pointy than they'd be, and we learned that if you get wolves when they're young they think you're alpha wolf and think of the family as the pack (there is a fair amount of evidence that human evolution may have been shaped by the very act of the domestication of the dog--this occured over 100,000 years ago [and dogs are still considered Canis lupus, the same as wolves--so evolution can go REALLY fast sometimes] and some even think dogs may have given archaic "modern Homo sapiens" the edge over Neandertals). And we learned to process food, so we really didn't need big canines and big molars, because we had other ways of making food managable to eat. (For that matter, most of us aren't terribly furry, either. Again, this is thought to be because we figured out how to use animal skins and fat and the flamy stuff to keep warm, so we didn't really need the fur [and as we went north it might even have been a slight disadvantage; light skin is actually better as you can absorb more sunlight for you to synthesize vitamin D].)
And thus ends probably more about paleontology and anthropology, and its relation to the Great Diet Debate, than any of you really cared to hear. :)
Field Marshall Stack dun said:
First off, it was a slow busy (literally as if half the connection had dropped); on my end the phone literally hung up, whilst on my dad's side the line was still on (in other words, it thought it still had a connection).
Secondly, I know how Bellsouth's lines tend to behave during busy traffic periods (for example, after the tornado that hit the Mt. Washington area); you will either get a fast busy or you will get a message stating all circuits are busy (I had tried to call my folks to let them know I was ok and making sure they were ok; they live close to Brooks, where the tornado touched down, and I was in the Mount Washington area where the tornado caused F4 damage around a mile northeast of us). Same for when we had a severe snowstorm in 1994 that knocked many of the power and phone lines down (people were asked to stay off the phones, and when the circuits got too busy you either got fast busy signals or "all circuits are busy" messages).
You did not get such funkiness as the phone line hanging up across HALF the connection (which is what it literally did), tying up the phone line to an extent it was impossible to connect to the other side till te circuit finally realised it had hung up on my end. Also, the slow busys were on attempts to RECONNECT; before 7 pm EST we had made a successful call to my husband's folks, and I had begun the call to my folks just before 7 pm EST (which was when the phone hung up and I got slow busy signals).
Furthermore, we had no problems after that point in trying to contact friends whom we were visiting for New Year's, at that.
Furthermore YET, this was at 7 pm EST, not at midnight EST. Nobody reported problems before that time, and I've heard of no problems (save for some stuff with international calls over Bellsouth's circuits, around midnight EST) after that time. It was just the momentary, two-minute hork RIGHT at 7 pm EST (which would be 0000 GMT 1 January 2000); that, and that alone (well, that combined with having witnessed a lot of Bellsouth incompetence and having had to deal with it firsthand to the point that every day I pray to God/Goddess/Cthulhu/[random deity here] that someone else comes in to break Hellsouth's monopoly on phone service--been trying to get bad lines fixed out here for over a YEAR which affect my entire apartment complex AND a major mall, and Bellsouth STILL refuses to admit it's their problem) that made me suspect it could've been a Y2K burp.
I'm prolly gonna check with my sister (who works at a telco) over the next few days to see what sorta funkiness could've caused those symptoms...I've certainly never had the phone lines behave like THAT, though. Not even in Bristol, TN during fall Winston Cup racing weekend (and trust me...it is pretty damned close to impossible to place a call in or out of Bristol on that weekend...even by pay phone, much less cell phones). :P
Well, it seems the worst that happened with me and Y2K (besides the 19100 bug on several sites--right now that seems to be the most common bug, which is probably a Good Thing) was a rather odd little hiccup that occured around midnight GMT (I'm in Eastern time, btw)...
I'm calling my folks to let them know I'm off and to wish them early Happy New Year's and all that so they don't get all worried about Y2K and all.
Upon which--mysteriously--the phone hangs up. I try redialing for a good five minutes. Phone line is busy (really damn weird...because my folks have call waiting, and the LAST time the phone line gave busies there was when the tornado hit in the Brooks/Mt. Washington area just south of Louisville in 1995).
I finally get through..."Dad, did you hang up?" "No...I thought YOU hung up..." Both of us are counting this down to a momentary fart on the part of Bellsouth Kentucky, aka the one phone company in English-speaking North America that makes US Worst actually look good. :)
"Bellsouth reporting no problems", my arse. :) At least in Kentucky, I'm fairly sure the phone lines did hiccup...then again, the phone lines are generally wonky here... :)
Some anonymous coward dun said:
I really hate to be the bearer of bad news to you, but unless you happen to be a member of that class of bacteria whom contain chlorophyll, your life is ultimately going to depend on the death of others. Period.
Yes, this even applies if you're a strict vegan; you end up killing a plant in some fashion (by breaking off its naughty bits and eating them [flowers and fruits; flowers are plant gonads, and fruits are exactly equivalent to an animal's uterus or the yolk-sac in an egg], by ripping its lungs and stomach out [leaves], by ripping out its mouth [roots, which absorb nutrients--which are largely from the death of other creatures--more below], or by eating the entire unborn plant [seeds, which are equivalent to eggs and/or fetuses]). Furthermore, the vast majority of plants do require organic nutrients--most of which are from:
Dead animals/plants which have decayed (read: used in part as food by bacteria and other lifeforms)
The excrement of animals and/or plants (with some plants, nitrogen is necessary; for others it's a waste product--this is why you grow corn and beans together, because it balances out in the end) which used other animals/plants in part or in whole as food.
In other words--unless you intend to stop eating at all, and stop breathing for that matter (oxygen is a toxic waste product for several kinds of bacteria, carbon dioxide is a toxic waste product for many forms of life here too) then your life--like it or not--will directly or indirectly cause the death or be the result of the death of some other life on the planet. Period. Yes, it's cruel in a way, but nobody said Mother Nature had to be nice all the time (there are times when she can be a real mother :). If you've a problem with this, I suggest one take it up with God/Goddess/the singularity at the beginning of the universe/the laws of physics which allowed DNA and proteins to form into life/[insert your favourite Moving Force of Life here].
Now...what one CAN do, mind, is make certain that the loss of life needed to sustain one's self and life on the planet causes the least amount of suffering to anyone else [for large values of "anyone" including non-human forms of life], one can try to "do good" by the life one must take to live, and one may decide not to indulge in wasteful taking of life (murder is wasteful, IMHO; then again, so is trophy hunting--if you're going to kill an animal on purpose, please, use as much of it as you can--it's only respectful). Give respect to the life you take to live, and maybe give a little bit of thanks for it (yes, I admit that I do think of the corn and pig and chicken eggs and green-beans that gave their lives so I might have food).
You can't really eliminate all killing to live, because it's kinda built into the system at this point. Death, like it or not, is an intrinsic part of life; you will eventually die (nobody likes to think of this, I know)...but your body will feed plants and bacteria and earthworms and suchlike, who'll get eaten by chickens or other birds or cows, who will in turn maybe be eaten by your grandkids (so in a weird sort of way, your own death has contributed to the survival of your grandkids because they can eat). It's all part of the cycle, and it's pretty much how things work. I think honestly the best we can do is give respect that life IS taken so we may live, and give respect to that which did give its life, and only take as much as needed and try not to be wasteful and take life besides that which we need to take to live on--which I think is entirely possible and doable, and makes sure that things don't get TOO out of whack. It doesn't help to pretend life doesn't depend on death, though.
(Yes, I know this sounds terribly morbid, but it's a subject I've been giving rather deep thought to for quite a number of years. It's something I actually hold as a sort of moral code--yes, you DO take life to live, even plants. Do good by that which gave its life so you may live, and treat humans and your fellow creatures with respect, and don't take life wastefully, and things should work out. You might even call it a bit pragmatic. I just don't see why people are so terrified of death, though, and why people seem to see taking plants' lives as different from animal lives (maybe because humans are animals too--I've just not seen anyone yelling "FRUITS AND SEEDS ARE ABORTIONS!" the same way people yell "Meat is murder!"...hell, I feel better about eating cows than about trophy hunting or fur-trapping [which I see as terribly wasteful--nobody really NEEDS fur to make clothes out of unless they're in a survival situation or in the high Arctic/Antarctic, and nobody needs to kill a deer just so one can mount its head over the fireplace]--at least most slaughterhouses use the whole darn cow down to the hooves. Admittedly, I DO go for organic beef when possible [because the moos aren't pumped fulla chemicals, and organic farming techniques tend to be kinder to the moos than factory farming], but I'm not going to delude myself in thinking eating a veggieburger or a portabella-mushroom sandwich is any less a taking of life than eating the remains of a former resident of Laura's Lean Beef Angus Farm is. In a way it kinda bugs me when people do that, because in a way they're being dishonest--if they'd just say "I don't think eating animals is respectful to the animal or good for the environment, so I've gone vegan and you should too" I'd probably not cringe so much. :)
Brumby dun asked:
Actually, the kitties are closer than horses and zebras are; African wildcats and housecats are so closely related that they can have fertile offspring, and most modern nomenclature systems actually list both African wildcats and housecats as subspecies of Felis sylvestris.
Horses and zebras are farther apart--a cross between a horse and a zebra would be infertile, as horses are around as removed from zebras as they are from donkeys--and while equine evolution IS dynamic it's still farther than what was done with the kitties. (And yes, if memory serves, E.Q. (the Grant's Zebra who was birthed by the quarter horse) is still around at the Louisville Zoo; I've some friends who work there and I'll have to see if he's still there or not. He beats the kitties by at least ten years; the big deal with the cats was that frozen embryos were successfully used and it's the first time it's been successfully done in felids...big deal, too, because both big and small cats are hurtin' as far as habitat goes, and most wild cats are at the very least threatened species.)
What happened with the kitties was roughly equivalent to a dog being implanted with wolf puppy embryos and giving birth to a litter of wolf puppies (as opposed to Golden Retriever or Alaskan Malamute puppies). The level of relation is just as close (if not closer) between African wildcats and housecats as it is between Alaskan malamutes and wolves, down to the fact you can have wildcat/housecat crossbreeds that can have kittens, and for all intents and purposes housecats are domesticated, slightly retarded versions of African wildcats (much as dogs are heavily domesticated, retarded wolves).
Mendax Veritas dun said:
1) No, it's not an urban legend; wolf-hybrids do exist and in fact there are actually registries for wolf-hybrids. (In most areas, there are special licensing requirements if they're over 50 percent wolf--basically the same requirements that you'd be under if you kept a full-blooded wolf--but yes, they exist.)
2) Wolves and dogs are the same species.
I'll repeat that for those of you who didn't get it--
Wolves and dogs are the same species.
Yes, I'm serious. :) Dogs and wolves (and dogs and coyotes, and if memory serves dogs and jackals) have long been known to interbreed; however, until fairly recently zoological nomenclature insisted on not only listing all these as different species but also listed "primitive dogs" like dingos as a separate species as well!
Fortunately, zoological nomenclature (specifically the ICZN) has corrected this, and ALL of these have now been sunk into subspecies of Canis lupus. Most breeds of dogs are now listed as Canis lupus familiaris (some breeds derived from "primitive dogs" like dingos, Australian cattle dogs, etc. are listed as Canis lupus dingo), coyotes have been sunk to Canis lupus latrans, red wolves (which may well be a hybrid of coyotes and wolves) are listed now as Canis lupus rufus, etc.
ObThread: For that matter, cats have been sunk too. Cats are now listed in newer versions of nomenclatures as Felis sylvestris domestica; African wildcats (from which house kitties are derived) are listed as Felis sylvestris lybica and European wildcats are listed as Felis sylvestris europeensis(?).
And FWIW, this is also NOT the first time an animal has give birth to an animal of another species. In the 1980's a horse at the Louisville Zoological Gardens gave birth to a Grant's zebra after having had the zebra embryo artificially implanted; this was specifically meant to give a way to breed more zebras, especially rare species. (The zebra who had a horse for a mom, E.Q., is (I believe) still living at the Louisville Zoo, btw. Incidentially, horses and zebras are even more distantly related than horses and donkeys; a semi-striped zebra known as a quagga (which looked a lot like a crossbreed between a donkey and a zebra) existed till humans hunted them to extinction in the 1800s. There is supposedly a captive breeding program in place in South Africa breeding quagga-like zebras to each other in an attempt to bring back quaggas (of a sort); I've also heard this same technique proposed to bring back mammoths.)
AugstWest dun said:
Just how the hell does one ork cows, anyways? I've heard of cow-orkers, but I can't imagine what the hell it is...transforming cattle into big green fellas? Goblinising cattle (in the Shadowrun sense) and if so (in the Shadowrun sense) does this mean Shadowrun wendigos (aka vampy-orks) are really man-eating cattle? Getting a bunch of Da Boyz into ranching? Just how the hell does one ork cows?
I think we should be told. Maybe the Grits Boy knows...I sure as hell don't ;)
Never having orked a cow, but having known more than one werecow,
GadZooki dun said: Child pornography is illegal to own, produce or sell just like narcotics. Except in your inane reply to your own banal post, my analogy works. The government doesn't need special censorship powers to remove such content, the same way it doesn't need new laws to get my crack rock. A legal warrant will do.
ObDisclaimer: I m'self don't like the idea of child porn, and strictly IMHO the government is probably in the right in banning it seeing as most child porn probably involves molesting kids in the process of making it. (Just to get that out of the way.)
As a minor aside--the definition of "child pornography" and/or "narcotics" can vary quite a bit from country to country. (Yes, I realise we're talking about the US and whether ISPs are to be considered common carriers or not. However, the Internet is an international forum, and hence anytime you talk about the Internet you are necessarily going to be talking about international agreements. :) For example, if memory serves some things which are considered kiddie-porn in the US (i.e. simulated pics of kids, teenagers, etc.) aren't illegal in parts of Scandinavia and (possibly) Japan; conversely, some stuff that is not considered illegal porn in the US (i.e. teens in bikinis, adult lesbians, etc.) IS considered illegal in other countries. Same goes for narcotics, too; qat (a common drug used in Middle Eastern countries) is illegal here in the US but actually sold on the streets legally in Ethiopia, and contrariwise most antihistamines and decongestant drugs are considered controlled substances in Japan (yes, you really CAN be busted for entering Japan with a package of Sudafed; pseudoephedrine is a controlled substance there and even the US State Department Travel Advisory for Japan warns about this).
For that matter, laws aren't all that uniform in the United States. Things which are perfectly legal in some states aren't in others; there was a very unfortunate case that proved this out several years ago (in which a postmaster general (?) in Tennessee got an adult BBS in California busted for violating Tennessee's obscenity laws with some of the piccies on the board). I'll also remind folks that the issue of "illegal sexual material" often doesn't have to do with kiddie porn at all; among other things, if a provider was held responsible for content prosecutors in Alabama could hold liable any site that sold dildos or most sexual material (yes, the sale or advertisement of marital aids is illegal in Alabama, and quite a few cities and counties in the Bible Belt have blue-laws that darn near make anything much racier than the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue illegal to sell in town; some of these are fairly large cities [Cincinatti has tried repeatedly to make ALL adult bookstores illegal as well as prohibit the sale of nearly all adult material--it ain't just Larry Flynt and Hustler they've gone to loggerheads with] at that. I won't even go into those states that still have sodomy laws on the books, because a few of those states also ban depictions of sodomy and/or "crimes against nature"...which can include literally everything from zoophilia, to oral/anal sex, to [in a few states] even consensual unmarried heterosexual sex in the missionary position...)
Personally, I think it's a damn good thing the courts ruled that a provider can't be held liable. Otherwise, a lot of ISPs and online services (cough cough ahem AOL cough ahem) would be in rather serious trouble and waiting for cops from the Fundamentalist Theocracy of Alabama to shut them down :P I'll also note, btw, that this does NOT give ISPs common carrier status...not yet, anyways. The only group that can formally do that is the FCC, who grants what services are and aren't common carriers (it is a specific status under the law which also has specific responsibilities--technically, under the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, if ISPs were declared common carriers they'd have to open up (for example) cable modem service and ADSL service to ALL ISPs at the same price and couldn't do sillybuggers like making one pay for two accounts--one with @Home and one with one's home ISP [as @Home is fond of doing] or making one pay MORE for ADSL service if one doesn't use bellsouth.net as one's ISP [which Bellsouth does, illegally I might add, in the Louisville area with its ADSL service--they actually make you pay MORE if you don't go with hellsouth.net--as if I actually needed another reason to pray to the gods of thunder that the headquarters would be hit by an F5 tornado :P]. They'd have to open it up to everyone.)
Now...what's needed now is some way to determine on a national basis where jurisdiction is when something that really IS illegal occurs. (Hell, internationally if possible, but I don't think that's happening in this lifetime :P) If someone runs a website in California which has adult material on it which is legal there--and someone in the Fundamentalist Theocracy of Alabama downloads that material--whose law applies? California's? Alabama's? (Kentucky is one of the very few states I know of that DOES list in its laws who has jurisdiction in computer crimes--it's basically [for example] if someone mailbombs you from another state the offense is supposed to have occured in that state and not Kentucky). For that matter, if I order beer from an online site (under a rather draconian law in Kentucky--meant mostly to prop up liquor warehouses and county sheriffs in dry counties--it is now illegal to mail-order ANY alcohol in Kentucky...this actually caused the famous Beer Camp at Oldenberg Brewery (in Covington, KY) to have to be cancelled last year, and arrangements made to have the beer from microbrews (some who mostly ship by mail order) to be shipped to a warehouse there...this is now literally the only way you can order beer, through a warehouse, because it's illegal to ship it :P) whose law trumps the other (especially if the online beer salesman is in a state where it's quite legal, and it'd be legal if I were driving there and shipping it across myself)? Can the other state tell Kentucky's Attorney-General to perform a auto-sexual act requiring DEX 25 when the Attorney-General decides to file a felony charge against the shipper and the company? (Yes, it's even illegal for UPS to ship--which is probably illegal, since UPS is a common carrier)
Just as a minor commentary on the appendix thread:
The real reason doctors don't ordinarily remove your appendix isn't to do with immune function (this was only recently discovered, btw; it was formerly thought to be entirely a vestigial organ from when primates evolved from insectivores--rabbits (lagomorphs, which likewise evolved from insectivores) have rather huge appendices compared to humans). It's not due to cost so much, either (most first-world and even a fair number of the second-world countries actually have free health care for citizens; the US is really freakish in that regard and is more like a third-world country in this regards).
Rather, it has to do with risks of abdominal surgery itself. The abdomen is, well, sort of a risky area to operate in to begin with; any jostling of organs risks adhesions that might end up blocking off your intestines, the appendix is attached to your colon which is chock full of bacteria that can cause some very nasty infections (and to try to sterilise the gut beforehand risks one getting superinfections of yeast or Clostridia (which can literally rot one's intestines; the bacteria are closely related to gas gangrene bacteria, and in fact in New Guinea a form of gas gangrene of the bowels known as pigbel is rather common due to people being infected with Clostridia from poorly cooked pork)...not fun), one has to be very careful in suturing the abdomen as abdominal sutures are among the most highly stressed of ANY surgical suture, etc. Even operations for appendicitis (in which the person is being operated on in hopes of removing the appendix before it bursts and causes peritonitis (basically infection of the entire abdominal wall lining; it can go into blood poisoning (septicemia) VERY quickly, can kill you, and at very best will make you desperately ill and cause you to have a hole in your abdomen for several weeks)) are risky; there have been cases where the appendix has literally exploded in the surgeon's hands, the tissues are inflamed, and often patients have to have drains placed and be put on a course of antibiotics to make sure they don't go into peritonitis anyways. Doctors don't like to muck about with abdominal surgery unless they have to, and even then as least as they can get away with (this is why hysterectomies, appendectomies, and even operations to remove cancerous sections of bowel have increasingly gone to laparoscopic surgery where they only have to make two incisions, one through the navel, instead of a large gash--it's far less stressful for patient AND doctor) and this is why appendectomy is an emergency procedure. :)
As a minor aside--it used to be fairly routine to remove adenoids and tonsils if a kid had even one bout of tonsillitis.What stopped that was the discovery that kids who had had both their adenoids and tonsils removed had higher chances of going into rheumatic fever from strep throat (rheumatic fever is fairly uncommon nowadays, but it can leave nervous system [St. Vitus' chorea] or cardivascular complications; in some cases it can even kill--Jim Henson died of essentially a very severe bout of rheumatic fever) and got more and worse respiratory infections than kids who had tonsils and/or adenoids. Now they only recommend removal if they've caused fairly severe problems with the kid to the point the child is almost always sick; it's been found it's better to leave them in than take them out.
Micah dun said:
This canard has been going around in fundy circles for a long time--specifically, ever since Chornobyl went boom (yup, since the 80's...when the same folks were also claiming Russia was Gog and Moscow was Magog and that Gorbachev was really the Antichrist). I can also tell you that those websites probably ALL got their info from the same source (the good old fundamentalist Christian rumour mill--the same one that's been spreading the urban legends about Disney movies and Proctor & Gamble being supposedly run by Satanists for God-only-knows how long) and the claim that "Chornobyl" means "Wormwood" is patent male bovine manure. :)
A little bit of fact-finding (which is how I found it was bull, btw)--Ukrainian, Russian, Belorussian, and other "Eastern Slavic" languages are VERY closely related. So closely related in fact that often they are mutually intelligible in roughly the same manner Catalan and Castillian Spanish, or Castillian Spanish and Portugese, are.
"Chernozem" (Ukrainian "chornozem") is Russian for "black earth" and refers to a very rich, black earth that exists in Ukraine. The name "Chernobyl" (Ukrainian "Chornobyl"; the official name of the town has in fact been Chornobyl since Ukraine told Russia it was breaking away from the old USSR) means "black table" and is a direct reference to the rich chernozem earth in the area.
(Warning--massive rant about to begin on how coercive fundy groups feed their memberships stuff like this. If you don't want to hear gory details and me whinge long and pissy on it, scroll to the next message now. If you are of a fundamentalist bent, you probably will NOT want to read what I am about to say next. :)
This isn't the first time fundies have been loose with the facts, btw. Nearly all of the urban legends about Disney movies having sexual references started from one or two sources in the fundamentalist Christian community (visit here for a good reference). In Sunday school back when I was young and stupid and thoroughly brainwashed, we were told (among other things) that the CEO of NBC was a practicing Satanist, that facial creams with "placenta" contained ground-up aborted babies (yes, they actually told us this in Sunday school! And for the record, stuff with placenta contains COW PLACENTA, not ground-up aborted human babies), that the ERA would force women to be lesbians, that parents should not send their kids to Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts but instead to the fundy alternatives (Royal Rangers & Missionettes) because the Boy Scouts supposedly allowed gay Scoutmasters and promoted atheism (a patent lie--they will not even let you IN if you are gay or atheist; several lawsuits have in fact been filed AGAINST the Boy Scouts because of this), and other fun tall tales. The same church has a guy who sent out fliers to the better part of my city (large metro area of almost a million people) including grocery stores that claimed all gay men were members of NAMBLA; the church members are told this and do not question it because they are literally told to avoid ALL "non-Christian" media because the media industry outside of that run by rabid fundies is run by Satanists (!). They even give out "Christian Yellow Pages" telling them not to do business except with those of "like faith" so they won't have to deal with people who might show them they are being fed outright lies by their pastor :P (And people wonder why I say that at least some branches of fundamentalist Christianity are as bad as Scientologists. They're as coercive, in any case (as I found out being brought into the Scientology debates back when the CoS was doing major net.abuse like the Cancelbunnies instead of just suing websites into oblivion); hell, at least one Assemblies of God church (the AoG is one of your biggest fundy denominations, btw--something like two million members) was actually outed as a cult on 20/20 (the "Brownsville Movement" in Pensacola, FL) and I can testify from my experience in an AoG church and from that of others who've walked away that more often than not those churches turn dangerously coercive. Pretty much they trip EVERY one of the warning signs that have been used for Scientologists; a favourite brainwashing tool [the whole "engrams" thang] is a repackaged version of good old "deliverance ministry" [the idea that anything trying to drive you out of that church--from news reports on how it's coercive to your own inner doubts--are signs of Satanic possession and you must "pray the demons out" or "exorcise" them by force...there are verified cases where people have been driven insane or even killed in these "exorcisms", and the Scientology equivalent is widely regarded as the single most damaging aspect of it], neither Scientologists nor coercive fundy groups want their members to have any outside info at all [saying slags are being done by "subversive persons"/"agents of Satan"], both exert heavy control on members [Scientologists being encouraged to join "Sea Org", fundies being encouraged to join political groups and to homeschool their kids, send them to fundy-run colleges when possible, and using "cell groups" to basically snitch on each other to make sure members stay in control], both have lots of money...I really could go on for hours on it. I've been a walkaway for something like thirteen years now, and I'm only starting to realise just HOW coercive the group was and just HOW much bull I was fed "in the name of God". And that's from one of the biggest damn churches in the COUNTRY. :P
ObY2K: Oh, and after Russia and Iraq didn't pan out as Gog and Magog and after a succession of Gorby, Boris "Where's the Stoli?" Yeltsin, Saddam Hussein, and Bill Clinton (!) didn't pan out as the Antichrist and/or Da Source of Da Comin' Pockylipse, now they're running about saying that the WWW is going to be the source of Armageddon and Y2K is going to be the Apocalypse (they were saying earlier that the world being destroyed by fire was going to be a nuclear war between the US and Russia over Israel (!)...and they were darn near jizzing themselves over it, too...it's really sickening in a way to know that the main reason they support Israel and Jews at ALL is because they are hoping Israel will get into some kind of war which would blow the entire world to kingdom-come, and they're essentially kissing God's arse by supporting anything Israel does [up to and including human rights violations] because they want to fight on the same side as the Israelis when the last war starts because they think that no matter what Israel is "God's Team"). Myself, I'm more afraid of the fundies running about spouting that crap than I am of society falling down going thud because of Y2K, because if they don't get their Armageddon they might try to make their own (and apparently Israel is so concerned about it that they've already set up a special task force just to deal with potentially dangerous fundy Christian groups--they've already had to send three groups out of Israel so far, and it's not even December yet...and also keep in mind that most fundy groups care about Israel for only three reasons--a) because they see Israelis as "God's Chosen" and hope to be lumped in with "God's Chosen" by supporting Israel no matter what [I actually heard it preached "You support them even if they commit genocide against an entire nation"], b) they are convinced Armageddon is going to break out when Israel goes to war with another country, and c) they want to be where the action is when Jesus comes back to play General Patton to the Army of Gawd). (And yes, I think I have a valid reason for worry--as I noted above and I've noted in past, I grew up in a very coercive fundamentalist group. The group has actually argued that "good people will go to hell and bad people will go to heaven" because as long as one claims one accepts Jesus this supposedly makes things alright--and then they can have carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want to do "in the name of God". They've seriously discussed bringing back the Burning Times and expanding them to ALL non-fundamentalists [Catholics even get denounced as "idol-worshippers", and Baptists as being "lukewarm Christians who don't accept the gifts of tongues"], and in a prior "Second Coming" panic in 1988 [when some guy released a book entitled "88 Reasons Why Jesus Will Come Back In 1988"] many people lost all their money by giving it to the church. Hell, MY family has in past been in financial trouble because money was given in "tithes" and "love offerings" when it was needed for food and bills :P. The group has been known to harass and picket homes of STRAIGHT people who have come out in support of gay-rights ordinances, and for well over ten years literally made the lives of an entire neighbourhood hell when they kept trying to get in construction project after construction project so they could get in additional access roads to suck in even more people [fortunately, Mum Nature intervened by a massive flood, the Corps of Engineers declared the entire area a wetlands and 100-year flood plain where further development was prohibited, and now the church is moving out to somewhere else they hope the neighbours can be bullied easier]. Partly because they ARE being coerced and the church tries it cut off every avenue of info that it doesn't own, and partly because one of the chief tenets is essentially "If you ain't with us you're a Satanist and workin' for the devil", and they are CONVINCED they are going to go to final holy war when Armageddon does hit, I seriously worry what some members of that church might do...and that's a relatively CALM one for coercive Bible-based groups, too. I'm not even gonna go into really scary stuff like Christian Identity or the really radical groups that have set up their own "Entime Camp" communities :P)
Pasqual Q. Porcupine dun said:
Minor nit to pick--I think you got fusion and fission bombs (aka H-bombs and A-bombs) reversed.
As I understand it, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked by A-bombs, that is, fission devices using uranium and plutonium.
H-bombs tend to be far larger, are what are generally stuck on the tops of ICBMs, and generally have only been used to blow up atolls in the Pacific (there hasn't yet been a wartime use of an H-bomb, thank God/Goddess/(deity)).
Or, to put it rather more dramatically the difference between fusion and fission:
Fission is what heats up the innards of the Earth enough for us to have stuff like plate tectonics and volcanos and earthquakes and hot-springs. (The inside of the earth is largely molten and heated by nuclear fission; Earth happened to have enough radioactive stuff when it formed to keep enough heat in to drive plate tectonics. Mars, it seems, might not have been so lucky, and the Moon didn't (it lost its heat before it ever got the chance to form volcanoes).
Fusion is what tends to drive stuff like stars. Fusion uses the light stuff like hydrogen, and if you get enough of it into a ball it'll start into fusion. Needless to say, most stars aren't going to bear anyone's weight on them; their surfaces are far too hot (the only exceptions to this are black holes and neutron stars, but those are really dead stars anyway or [in the case of black holes] maybe baby universes, so they really don't count).
So you may thank fission for Kilahuea and hot-springs and fusion for the sun. ;) (This also explains why H-bombs are so much more destructive, blowing-up-wise, than A-bombs--there is a hell of a lot more energy released, and they are in a way making miniature suns that burn out VERY quickly. Fission devices (A-bombs, like Fat Boy) don't release as much energy but tend to be far "dirtier" radiation-wise, though.)
Some anonymous coward dun said:
No, actually, sheetrock is better than used nappies or trash. Two reasons:
1) The USPS generally will not ship stuff that can be classified as "hazardous waste". Used nappies for the most part are considered biohazardous waste, and the USPS can actually come after youif they get a complaint from the businesswankers that " sent us a bunch of used diapers".
2) The point is to make them pay SO much for shipping for a return-reply envelope that it is not going to be worth their while to ever do business with you again (much how shunning/IDPs, strong AUPs, "spam fines" at some ISPs (you pay a fine if your account is ever closed for spamming) and the MAPS-RBL are meant to make spamming more trouble than it's worth). I seriously doubt that you are going to find sixty-nine pounds of used nappies ANYWHERE short of a nursing home, a large orphanage, or a state institute for the profoundly retarded. :) (By god, if I was going to send them nappies, I'd make sure I had enough to make them pay several dollars--in the tens to hundreds of dollars, yet--to pay for it! :)
The idea of heavy packages works because a) you aren't breaking postal regs by shipping hazmat--everything is perfectly legal and binding and they HAVE to pay the shipping, and b) shipping on large packages is expensive enough to potentially hurt a mass-mailer in the pocketbook and thus deliver a 69-pound LART to the offender (postage is $19.60 for a 69-pound package from my hometown to one junk mailer for a normal parcel; around $53.79 for an oversized parcel...so make sure that in any parcels you send, the length of its longest side plus the distance around its thickest part is more than 108 inches and less than or equal to 130 inches, kids ;).
(un)Fortunately, I don't get too much junk mail...mostly coupons and people persistently trying to give me credit cards (I avoid credit cards like the black plague :). This idea is just evil enough that I LIKE it, though. :)=
Two recent things on Celebration strike incredible humour with me...
1) Celebration was designed to be this nice, homogenised community of the future...and reportedly the school system is in an uproar because two groups of parents are darn near ready to go to fisticuffs over how the school system should be run and whether the style of education being done there is good or whether they should go back to a more "traditional" form of education rather than hands-on stuffle.
2) Celebration was basically built from a swamp and designed basically so humans could "rise above nature with the hope of new technology". And many people are VERY pissed because, well, it seems Celebration is now being overrun with (ironically, of all things) mice. Thousands of mice, in fact. To the point where people are trapping upwards of 20-70 mice PER DAY. The Health Board in Florida is very worried that a breakout of some nasty mouse-borne disease like Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome ("Four Corners Disease"--something like 80 percent of people who get it die, usually from suffocating in their own lung fluids...not fun). Most experts think between a swamp being drained, refilled, the massive development in the Orlando area in the past 20 years, and a rather bad turn of weather including droughts, it's driven the mice in proportions near a mouse-plague right into Celebration and other communities nearby...in other words, Walt Disney and co. helped throw things JUST out of balance enough that the "community of the future" is being overrun by *snicker* MICE.
Sone anonymous coward dun said: I agree with everything you said except this. Native Americans did not have alcohol until we came to North America. That's why there is a higher percentage of alcoholism, in europe people with bad alcoholism genes were most likely just bred out of the gene pool over hundreds of years.
As some others have noted already, I'm afraid you're rather mistaken. :)
There were no less than three separate and distinct alcoholic beverages that were developed by Native Americans some hundreds of years before silly Cristobal Colon got lost and confused Hispaniola for Indonesia. :) The first was a corn-beer which was later distilled (and the Mayas actually used to give themselves ENEMAS with this stuff in rituals); the second was mezcal (which has been mentioned several times here, and is the direct ancestor of tequila--and you can still buy the stuff in a lot of places); the third (which I'll grant is not commonly known) is a sort of fruit-beer or metheglin made from passionfruit (yes, passionfruit actually grows in the United States--bet most of you didn't know that :) known as "old field apricot drink" (I'm using the English translation) which was invented by the Cherokee some hundreds of years back which is approximately as strong as kvass (a Russian beer made from rye bread).
The Mayas and Aztecs tended to use the corn-beer and mezcal for religious purposes (the Mayas, again, even going to such measures as taking the stuff in enemas when one was puking too much to keep it down--which will also, incidentially, get one more drunk than just drinking it--it's actually been suggested in books on treatment of radiation poisoning that if one can't safely give someone an IV one could well give someone an enema of essential nutrients). "Old field apricot drink" wasn't used for any ritual purposes that I know of (it might have hundreds of years back, but there's been a fair amount of Cherokee lore that got lost thanks to assimilation + the Trail of Tears) but was used in exactly the same manner as your average white American bubba uses Bud Light--as a refresher after a hard day's work. (Kvass and "old field apricot drink" tend to have a lower alcohol level than traditional Western beers, though...the fermentation is only about a week or so.)
In Europe, the selection wasn't so much for alcoholics to be bred out (Russia has a rather severe problem with alcoholism, from what I understand, as do many countries surrounding the Arctic Circle) but for people who are efficient producers of alcohol dehydrogenase to be selected in the gene pool. This is largely because alcohol has been a large part of European culture for a long time. (I can state that your average resident of Belfast could well drink me under the table. Yes, I learned the hard way to NEVER try to outdrink an Irishman, especially since a) I happen to be part Cherokee and b) my liver hasn't gotten that much exercise and c) I weighed about half as much as said Belfastian. :)
In most other countries (with the major exception of Japan and the Middle East) distilled liquors were rarely used, and most of the native beers (yes, most cultures have some form of beer) are at or slightly lower strength than your average beer here in the States. Hence the genes for alcohol dehydrogenase weren't as strongly selected for.
You see this for stuff besides alcohol, btw; many aboriginal peoples (including Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, and if memory serves some Papuan and African populations) have considerable troubles handling the large amounts of refined sugars and carbohydrates in the Western diet to the point that they have a far higher incidence of type II diabetes than the average population. (It's especially bad among the Pima peoples in the US Southwest, of which something like 80-90% of the population is diabetic; CNN recently did a report in its health section on the health crisis in the population as a result.) There have also been reported cases (though I don't know how true this is, and I've never been able to find more than one or two sources on it so this MAY well be an urban legend) of sugar addiction among the Inuit peoples (who traditionally have not had ANY sugar in their diet, aside that from game; not even that much fructose).
Also as a fun aside--Europeans didn't invent distillation--it was invented by the Moorish peoples sometime in the 700-800s AD and later brought over...specifically by the same folks who invented algebra. (Yes, you may thank Morocco for fine Scotch and Kentucky bourbon. :) The word "alcohol" is actually derived from an Arabic term, in fact...it might be really interesting to see if alcohol dehydrogenase has been selected even more strongly for in these populations than the population at large...
(Yes, I have a slightly biased viewpoint on things. Firstly, I happen to be part Native American, specifically the folks who brought you "old field apricot drink". Secondly, I lived near a lot of people who came from the folks who brought you mezcal and tequila. :) Thirdly, I have an interest in homebrewing and would actually like to find some passionfruit juice or syrup (or preferably passionfruit itself) to try to make a version of "old field apricot drink" as a metheglin. ;)
N1UGLham dun said: On the contrary, I think it could be quite useful to a large number of disabled people. There are so many things that we don't understand about the nervous system (including the brain).
I m'self think probably the most likely use for this would be for people who are paralysed as a result of nerve injury (i.e. like what Christopher Reeve did--fell off a horse, broke his neck in the process). I am not certain it'd work for neurodegenerative diseases nor am I sure it would work for stuff in the brain or that is inborn (i.e. strokes or spina bifida).
I myself doubt it'd work because MS is largely an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its own myelin nerve sheathings. (A rough parallel would be stripping the insulation off of an electrical cord, leaving it vulnerable to corrosion and short circuits and whatnot. The problems you get with MS are basically due to the fact the nerves are short-circuiting, and I'm not sure how a muscle-movement chip is going to help because it has to go through the nervous system at some point.)
It really depends on the cause and type of epilepsy. Most epilepsy is due to a lesion of unknown cause, brain injury, or severe problems with brain development (I'm thinking on the last of really bad kinds of epilepsy such as infantile spasms or Lennox-Gastaut syndrome where people can have upwards of hundreds of seizures a day and they are rarely controllable without surgery.)
The most useful kind of "chip" I could think of for epileptics is POSSIBLY some sort of "brain pacemaker" (epilepsy is caused when part of the brain, usually around a lesion, starts misfiring; yes, the concept is similar to arrythmias in the heart, and in fact the type of abnormal brain waves in infantile spasms is referred to as "hypsarrythmia"). These devices are supposedly in clinical trials for severe epilepsy. (This is also why severely epileptic kids will sometimes get half their brain removed--it removes the focus of the seizures and the kids can usually do pretty well with half a brain. This is also why most epileptic drugs (especially for status epilepticus--where one is constantly having seizures) tend to be heavy downers or tranquilisers.)
I'm not really sure this is possible. Firstly, the chip would have to recognise NOT ONLY that the person is enraged but also recognise the TARGET of the rage and realise this is a person who is a victim of domestic abuse. I don't think AI is quite that good yet. :)
Besides, it still wouldn't take care of OTHER types of domestic abuse such as emotional abuse (trust me...even if an abuser can't hit you they will STILL find ways to make your life a living hell if at all possible) which probably occur along WITH physical abuse. It also doesn't take care of the fact that being an abuser is largely an emotional/behaviour disorder that is poorly understood as are ALL disorders of violence. (No, I don't think this could work for rapists either, because rape is far more of a crime of dominance and power over a helpless individual than of sex. You'd have to do some real work to get it to distinguish impulses relating to rape from impulses relating to being the "top" of a consentual BD/SM relationship. :) How does one program "consent"?)
I keep seeing people mention this and I have to chuckle. Penile hardwiring is going to be far more useful for, say, incontinence than getting a hard-on because the muscles that control the urethra are just about the only muscles IN one's penis. (Seriously. You know why cock-rings and Viagra work? Because one gets a hard-on by a rush of blood caused by stimulation of the penis. The cock-rings hold the blood in acting as a tourniquet; Viagra basically causes you to pump more blood (this is why it is Very Bad for heart patients to take Viagra). This is also why a lot of diabetic men have problems with impotence; diabetes has a tendency to destroy nerve endings ["diabetic neuropathy"] and pretty much they can't get enough of a nerve signal to get the "hard-on" message, and diabetes causes thickening of the blood and heart damage [this is why a lot of longterm diabetics are on heart medication]. And no, a penile implant wouldn't work unless you have an "on" button for them--it's the nerve endings at the END that are destroyed.) You'd do better with a combination of sensor + blood-pump near the penis.
In regards to the ease of Things Going To Hell Rights-Wise in the US:
There is actually a second way that things could go to hell. Specifically, the Constitution provides for a Constitutional Convention (or "Con-Con") to be held once the "governments" of 3/4ths of the states call for a Con-Con.
The rather scary things on this are:
1) It is unknown and there is considerable debate over whether a "Con-Con" is limited to discussion of one amendment or if the entire Constitution becomes fair game. (No procedures exist for determining which is the case--this is relevant because many states have called for Con-Cons on specific issues such as anti-abortion amendments or tax reform amendments to the Constitution.)
2) There is legal debate over whether a call for a Con-Con can be rescinded once the "government" has called for one, and most legal theory tends to lean towards the idea that Con-Con calls CANNOT be rescinded.
3) There is some question as to what constitutes approval by a government of a Con-Con--specifically, whether it is restricted to state legislatures. (Some legal theorists have stated that technically a meeting of the state governments--where representatives from each state are sent by approval of the legislature and the governor--could legally call a Con-Con due to the vague way it is defined in the Constitution.) According to whom you speak with, we are either not terribly close or dangerously close to a Con-Con being able to be held in the US. Assuming a worst-case scenario, we are approximately two states away from the legal requirements for a Con-Con being held.
In a REALLY worst-case scenario, it is entirely possible that a Con-Con could be held and a fundamentalist theocracy (or something similarly un-republican), monarchy, parliament, or dictatorship could well result (especially since the only requirements would be for the authors to show it to the states for ratification). Many feel in a Con-Con the entire Constitution is fair game.
Of course, I'd proffer that it doesn't take amendments or Con-Cons to destroy the effectiveness of a Constitution. Pure apathy, or even worse, apathy combined with a charismatic leader who is more than able and willing to whip people into a froth against the "Enemy of the Week" can wreck a constitution just as well as a Con-Con can. (Look at how most of our rights have been whittled away to "protect the children against the evils of sex and violence", or how many of our rights have been effectively destroyed between the Cold War and the "war against drugs". I'm not even going to go into how the country has gone literally so far to the right that Nixon would be considered a liberal in the modern US political spectrum...let's just say there are some rather frightening parallels to the government of Germany just before Hitler got elected Chancellor. And incidentially, Hitler was elected...)
A good review, but some minor nitpicks...
Actually, the Ainu aren't dead. Marginalised to hell and back, yes...but they aren't extinct. There are several hundred to thousands of Ainu alive and well on Hokkaido and Sakhalin islands, trying very hard to keep their culture alive.
Oddly, the Ainu may have come from an earlier culture called the Jomon culture, which is known from pottery and (possibly) from some rather spectacular underwater monoliths off the coast of Okinawa. (The modern Japanese culture is thought to be largely a mix of Jomon and ancient Korean influences, and racially the Japanese, Koreans, and Mongolians fit in the same subdivision of Oriental peoples.) The movie does hint strongly of Ashitaka being a remnant of the Jomon people; Jomon artwork is actually shown in the beginning. (This probably counts as One Of Those Bits Of Japanese Culture Most Merkuns Wouldn't Get. ;)
I'll agree it doesn't translate at all well. Gaiman hinted (in earlier discussions on the translation) that a good translation of the title could be "Shamanic Princess" (alas, there's already an anime by that name or I'm sure it would have been used).
As I understand it (and please note that my grasp of Japanese mythology isn't as good as it should be) the concept of "mononoke" is similar to both stories of the "fae-folk" in Ireland and the concept of Animal Masters in Native American mythos--at the same time. They could be helpful or angry, depending on their nature and how they were treated...in Ireland, too, faerie stuff tends to be feared because it's generally NOT nice to mess with the fae-folk (they were seen as capricious).
(minor spoiler) If one needs to put this in perspective with other mythologies one might be more familiar with, the little forest-spirits could be seen almost like pixies and it could be argued in all seriousness that San was raised by Wolf (as in big-W Wolf, as in the Animal Master sense of Wolf). It's not 100% exact, but it's as close as one is going to get and a hell of a lot closer than one'd get in most Western mythology at the least :)
To give credit, this could be a bad translation on either side. (First off, I honestly don't know if there ever were wolves in Japan the same way there were in, say, Russia. Secondly, sometimes things get described VERY differently in other languages and a literal translation is going to be off--for example, in Lakota the word for "horse" translates literally to "mystery [magick? mononoke? ;)] dog", and in several Native American languages the terms for dog and/or coyote translate to "little wolf" or the term for wolf translates to "little coyote" or "wild dog". Considering Japanese and English are as different as, say, English and most Native American languages in both the way one "thinks" in the language and in the way things are typically named, I can well see how "wolf" could come out as "mountain dog". Then again, I have minor side interests in both Japanese and Native American languages--I honestly think in some ways it'd be easier to translate from Japanese to Tsalagiyi (Cherokee) or Dine' (Navaho) or Anishinaabeg (Ojibwa) and back than it would be to translate from any of those four languages to English because the modes of "thinking" and expressing are more similar between those four languages than they are between English (which is pretty darned amazing, since all five languages are in totally separate language families that probably either evolved totally separately from each other or diverged shortly after humans developed language). :)
Some anonymous coward dun wrote:
It'd have been flawless--IF THEY DIDN'T MAKE TENCHI SOUND LIKE A DAMNED MUPPET! "This is Kermit dee Juraian Prince speaking..." I swear the voice actor sounds like Kermit...I literally can't watch the dub without laughing my arse off because of this, and nobody else I know can, either. :3
On the other hand, if any of you want to know what a Louisville accent sounds like...Ryoko in the dubs sounds dead like she should be from Louisville, or at least SOME part of the South...but she sounds more like Louisvillians than, say, Tennesseans or people from central or Eastern Kentucky...just a twinge of twang there...
And now for something semi-unrelated to dubs, but related peripherally to Tenchi. Anyone who hates Micros~1 or even dislikes them really needs to get a copy of "Pretty Sammy" volume 2 (subbed or dubbed, don't matter none) and watch it. It is, very possibly, one of the most savage parodies of Micros~1 I have ever seen--about the only things changed are involvement of Sasami as a magical princess (taking the piss of Sailor Moon) and names changed to protect the guilty. :)
And I STILL think Apple ripped off the design of the I-Book from Washu's laptop in the Pretty Sammy series ;)
Webslacker dun said: Oh, and another great from Studio Ghibli is Grave of the Fireflies. Roger Ebert said it was the only animated movie that ever made him cry.
"Only animated movie that ever made him cry", HELL. Trust me when I say you don't want ANY sharp objects around (or even dull ones capable of causing self-injury) when watching "Grave of the Fireflies", especially the last 45 minutes or so. (I'm not going to say why, because this would constitute a major spoiler warning--let's just say that the movie occurs near the end of WW II in Japan and snowflakes don't occur in summer, and leave it at that.) It is a HORRIBLY depressing movie, though not without good reason...
Me, well, I'm still kinda pissed/whingy that the closest theatre to where I live that is showing "Princess Mononoke" is OVER THREE HUNDRED MILES AWAY *sob* *wail* *howl at moon* *rending of clothing and donning of sack-cloth and ashes ensues*. So I have to now pressure y'all who ARE near major market areas that are showing it to go see "Princess Mononoke" if I have any hope of seeing it come to theatres in Louisville instead of waiting for over a year for it to come out on DVD.
Trust me, you want to see this movie . One, it is positively beautiful and from what I've heard they've not farged the dubbing up (Gaiman is just about the only person alive that I think could pull it off, but from what I've heard he's done it). Secondly, 235 million Japanese can't be wrong (it literally was the most popular movie EVER in Japan until Titanic--I'm up for starting a posse to feed Leonardo DeCaprio to the inugami ;). Thirdly, I promise you all it is nowhere near as suicide-inducing as "Grave of the Fireflies" (yes, there are tear-jerker scenes, but not the "gods, this is so sad I think I'm going to kill myself" kind--the good kind of tear-jerker). Fourthly, if you don't see it and it doesn't come to Louisville, I will make it my personal mission next Halloween to dress up as San and get a large club and personally beat living hell out of each and every Slashdot reader who was within 50 miles of a market showing "Princess Mononoke" and didn't see it (yes, I want to see the movie THAT badly, no, I don't have enough money for a 600-mile road trip or I'd be going on one my own bloody self, and YES, I'M DEADLY SERIOUS ABOUT HOW THIS MOVIE BETTER COME TO LOUISVILLE THEATRES, DAMNIT :)=. ;3
(As a minor aside, something tells me that Miramax/Disney won't be bringing over "Grave of the Fireflies". I am not certain Disney wants the larger part of its adult audience to commit suicide. :) Though it might make a REALLY nice Christmas present to Michael Eisner :)=