It is perhaps useful as a study of the way we communicate. Applications would include language reform and movement to and perfection of a more effective language such as esperanto.
The criticism was also good for me as a quick mental backflip and consequent giggle. Hey we're geeks right? Or actually we're all unique individuals so I won't hold you to conform to the convenionality of the group's unconvention.:)
I agree with you that people are complex, and can't be reduced to 'mindless cattle' (setting aside the fact that cattle have minds and personalities).. however I can't help but defend the previous poster somewhat that it would be excessively reductionist to ignore that most people do seem to act out primate impulses that are rather herd-like. Perhaps you don't disagree, as you point out that hominids tend to be tribal. What are the tribal impulses except norm-enforcement, dominance hierarchies, mutual aid between accepted members, and adoption of external and internal markers of acceptance of all the above?
In defense of the original poster, I agree with his fundamental impulse that something higher should be sought, something that is rational and sensible, rather than something ephemeral and culturally dependent.
Oh yeah, and I don't know about you, but if I have some selecting my music for me, I hope they have my interests in mind and not just their own...
When rims, women, etc, are used almost entirely for the purpose of establishing a [fantasy] sense of superiority in your subgroup, it is essentially in the same primate vein as the 'thug' image.
Maybe some people are deflected by the strong practical pressure against applying interpersonal violence yet still play the same game, just sticking to less socially expensive tactics.
If we are going to make any further ethical (and consequently social, economic, and personal) progress that benefits most everyone, we're going to have to identify this primate impulse and fight it. Sadly, economics might be working against the chance of this just right now.
Sure, there are bound to be some people out there who just happen to like skinny rubber tires and shiny wheels for their personal aesthetic enjoyment only, but we won't know who they are until cool suddenly reverses polarity back to big tires, tiny rims, or whatever.
Once I set up my video motion detection cameras and starting getting some clear shots of the numerous folks running and selling drugs on my street, I at least got a good laugh out of it.
Guess what they're wearing? Khaki slacks, soft collar shirts, penny loafers.. they dress just like yuppie businessmen.. they have the same primitivist hangup over status as the people they are emulating too.
So, yeah, from the perspective of the drug infested ghetto I live in, I'd have to say that the MTV gangsta has seperated from reality.. a big joke.
A contributor to 2600 had a neat idea.. creating an auto-running batch file that copies the contents of my documents to your thumb drive. Plug and play indeed!
Unfortunately for the chinese people, their system of government seems to have accepted corruption as a way of life. Corruption just doesn't work very well. It insures that the person or organisation best qualified to do the job probably won't be the one to get it. It prevents workers from organising to get a share of the profits, which leads to more spending power and more motivation to work. It prevents fundamental social and economic problems from being fixed my laws. It holds back almost all collective progress.
However, since we seem to have fully taken for granted the advances of progressive campaigners that we enjoy, we're sliding back down toward's china's level. Hopefully our remaining democratic structures will keep it from getting too bad.
I've both sent and received numerous packages via UPS and never had any trouble at all.
Although once, a non-UPS employee at an independent store in south central LA packed a laptop with a single layer of bubblewrap and somehow imagined that would be enough for it to survive being buffeted in a completely empty box 2 feet cubed. Everything I've ever dealt with from south central LA seems to be screwed up in some way.. I guess civilization is just out to lunch there.
We always reach for the technical solution first don't we? I should add to my post that although I get poor mileage, I burn very little gas because I live in the very center of the American's third largest city, Houston, and most everything I want to visit is within 5 miles from home.
Where you live is more important than your mileage.. at least in a big city.
Ok, it's supposed to get something like 18 MPG with the straight 6 motor, so I guess this illustrates the impact of aging on vehicle systems.. although on a new computer controlled car that impact just seems to be that it simply doesn't work..
Is there any example of a radio station web site that posts everything, more or less forever?
The only one I know of is KPFTarchive.org, which currently sports over 2000 public affairs mp3 recordings and counting.
Yeah, ok, this is my site, but it's for a non-profit high power FM station in Houston, TX. It's an all volunteer thing.
True story- We used to have a rocket building club among some high school friends of mine, and would semi-regularly launch in the huge, mowed fields next to the JSC Saturn V.
As we were not a proper rocket club, but a bunch of unsupervised geek-childs, the emphasis was on the crazy, unpredicatble, ovepowered, underfinned, prone to explode, etc, etc.
It so happened I built a series of rocket engine powered planes, most of which just spun around. However one made a very dramatic flaming high speed 500 foot long horizontal flight that ended in a head on collision with second stage of the Saturn V.:)
There was no visible damage to the space-capable behemoth, but my cardboard aeronautical absurdity crumpled and shattered from the blow!
It's too bad, what with the overboard paranoia and touristy admission charging space center they built, you can't even get out there anymore, much less have fire missiles of your own.
disclaimer- I did not aim my plane at the Saturn V, it homed in on its own!
The ones who really need cameras are the police. Not cameras they can turn off or walk away from, but worn cameras that record audio and video the entire time they are on duty, with exceptionally stiff penalties for blocking or disabling the camera.
This would protect the public from illegal searches, threats, breaking of your property, and general unprofessionalism (all of which I've personally seen from the police). It would protect the police by establishing a record of just what the cop saw- truly what the situation looked like from their perpspective.
Of course, there would have be ironclad safeguards, such as complete access all footage by the public, etc.
I agree! The fundamental danger to the viability of our civil society, is that the powers that be could use a system like this to identify the people most effective in anti-goverment/ anti-power groups. Right now, they are hesitant to take people out because there is a real cost and political danger to doing so. If they knew who eveyone was, what they were doing, who was most active, etc, they could make these choices much less cautiously.
As an example, I was at a dolpinarium protest when the cops clumsily planted a huge quantity of crack on an individual who was committing civil disobedience and blocking the street. Oops, the person they chose is the son of the CEO of a major bank. As shitty as it is, because of that he was about to get the kind of defense that nearly convicting the cops rather than the protestor.
Imagine if they had taken out Martin Luther King early on, etc, etc...
Maybe if we really can watch the watchers we'd be able to do something about it.
We are fortunate that the progressive activists of the 1890's (+-20 years), union organisers of the 1930's, etc, etc were not as defeatist. It seems like corruption has exploitation has to get real bad for people to take action strong enough to win. Then, we coast on their achievements for s while as it seems like a nondescript bit of 'the way things have always been' rather than a conciously worked-for change.
It gets funny looks at work, but I put my gadgets in a trash bag when going to and from my car in my ethnic, drug infested neighbourhood.
Seriously though, when are we going to make a real effort to solve this problem? It's not inevitable unless we think it is. Living in the aforementioned neighbourhood in Houston, Texzs, I can tell you that for whatever reason, the cops make no serious effort to restrain the folks here from committing crimes. Allowing large parts of the city to remain human cancers, where crime is an accepted part of the culture kids grow up in, is one f-cked up way of running a society.
One night I wanted to watch internet TV in bed. I didn't own a laptop.. The furniture in my cramped apartment allowed no spot to set the 17" CRT except for the bed. My girlfriend and I share a full size mattress, so I had to hold the 17" monitor in my lap to watch it. Still, I enjoyed the experience.. though CRTs in bed do tend to flip over if you step right in front of them. You can flip them right ought of bed in fact!
People of our era like to be reductionist and imagine that all of these insanely complicated issues can reduce down to simplicities, like the employer/employee relationship you mention, or imaginary 'laws' like the invisible hand.
In reality each interaction between people, and individual choices exist in a roiling sea of interconnectedness. The consequences for each choice, or for system wide impositions like guilds, government, common practice, etc are multifaceted and complex.
So my question to the world is, when are we going to get over out 'vietnam complex' that expects failure from any attempt at social enginneering, while keeping faith in fantasy 'laws' that only seem to predict the world accurately less than half the time, and get down to the real work of at least trying to build a better world in everyone's interest?
The Victorians had much less fear of doing this, and considering where they started and where they ended, they accomplished a fuckload more than the current era seems to be able to do.
Whether is be through widespread collective grassroots activism, through focusing on the basics like getting philosophy education in public schools, or through forming something similar or different to unions, something needs to be done.
Anytime you try, you win some and you lose some, but to give up and act like it's all beyond us as a society will surely get us all fucked in the ass sooner, or later.
Unless your acts echo down the chain of cause and effect.. the cyberpunk view.. Jesus encoding himself into the form of his religion and church.. an aspect of him living on..
we need to shed this unspoken assumption
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
-that meaning and purpose is somehow built into the nature of the universe, as it was/is for the religious point of view. Even among most atheists and existentialists we've carried this over without realizing it. It forces you down some rationally untenable paths..
I suspect that we can construct rationally very stong points of view about what is 'right and wrong', 'good and bad' without abandoning a sense of reason and the righteousness to compare competing views for their strength. On the other end of things, I also think that we overestimate the infallibility we place on the so called hard sciences.
Here's a heresy for you- the victorians were in some ways heroic for reaching for a better, more moral, more intellectual world than their grandparents had created. 20th century thought was largely a masturbatory wrong turn.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it for a while. eh?
Slashdot Mirror
It is perhaps useful as a study of the way we communicate. Applications would include language reform and movement to and perfection of a more effective language such as esperanto.
:)
The criticism was also good for me as a quick mental backflip and consequent giggle. Hey we're geeks right? Or actually we're all unique individuals so I won't hold you to conform to the convenionality of the group's unconvention.
I agree with you that people are complex, and can't be reduced to 'mindless cattle' (setting aside the fact that cattle have minds and personalities).. however I can't help but defend the previous poster somewhat that it would be excessively reductionist to ignore that most people do seem to act out primate impulses that are rather herd-like. Perhaps you don't disagree, as you point out that hominids tend to be tribal. What are the tribal impulses except norm-enforcement, dominance hierarchies, mutual aid between accepted members, and adoption of external and internal markers of acceptance of all the above?
In defense of the original poster, I agree with his fundamental impulse that something higher should be sought, something that is rational and sensible, rather than something ephemeral and culturally dependent.
Oh yeah, and I don't know about you, but if I have some selecting my music for me, I hope they have my interests in mind and not just their own...
just a few imperfect thoughts..
When rims, women, etc, are used almost entirely for the purpose of establishing a [fantasy] sense of superiority in your subgroup, it is essentially in the same primate vein as the 'thug' image.
Maybe some people are deflected by the strong practical pressure against applying interpersonal violence yet still play the same game, just sticking to less socially expensive tactics.
If we are going to make any further ethical (and consequently social, economic, and personal) progress that benefits most everyone, we're going to have to identify this primate impulse and fight it. Sadly, economics might be working against the chance of this just right now.
Sure, there are bound to be some people out there who just happen to like skinny rubber tires and shiny wheels for their personal aesthetic enjoyment only, but we won't know who they are until cool suddenly reverses polarity back to big tires, tiny rims, or whatever.
Once I set up my video motion detection cameras and starting getting some clear shots of the numerous folks running and selling drugs on my street, I at least got a good laugh out of it.
Guess what they're wearing? Khaki slacks, soft collar shirts, penny loafers.. they dress just like yuppie businessmen.. they have the same primitivist hangup over status as the people they are emulating too.
So, yeah, from the perspective of the drug infested ghetto I live in, I'd have to say that the MTV gangsta has seperated from reality.. a big joke.
A contributor to 2600 had a neat idea.. creating an auto-running batch file that copies the contents of my documents to your thumb drive. Plug and play indeed!
Yeah, the Tomahawk missiles seem to have the political murders covered pretty well.
Unfortunately for the chinese people, their system of government seems to have accepted corruption as a way of life. Corruption just doesn't work very well. It insures that the person or organisation best qualified to do the job probably won't be the one to get it. It prevents workers from organising to get a share of the profits, which leads to more spending power and more motivation to work. It prevents fundamental social and economic problems from being fixed my laws. It holds back almost all collective progress.
However, since we seem to have fully taken for granted the advances of progressive campaigners that we enjoy, we're sliding back down toward's china's level. Hopefully our remaining democratic structures will keep it from getting too bad.
I don't know if it is wonderful or not, but I'm fairly certain the israeli government would be the best organization to ask.
I've both sent and received numerous packages via UPS and never had any trouble at all.
Although once, a non-UPS employee at an independent store in south central LA packed a laptop with a single layer of bubblewrap and somehow imagined that would be enough for it to survive being buffeted in a completely empty box 2 feet cubed. Everything I've ever dealt with from south central LA seems to be screwed up in some way.. I guess civilization is just out to lunch there.
We always reach for the technical solution first don't we? I should add to my post that although I get poor mileage, I burn very little gas because I live in the very center of the American's third largest city, Houston, and most everything I want to visit is within 5 miles from home.
Where you live is more important than your mileage.. at least in a big city.
Ok, it's supposed to get something like 18 MPG with the straight 6 motor, so I guess this illustrates the impact of aging on vehicle systems.. although on a new computer controlled car that impact just seems to be that it simply doesn't work..
Don't forget oblivious Mexicans or gangsters from the hood who drive slow like they walk...
That's cool, but altogether different than listening to quality radio drama.
Is there any example of a radio station web site that posts everything, more or less forever? The only one I know of is KPFTarchive.org, which currently sports over 2000 public affairs mp3 recordings and counting. Yeah, ok, this is my site, but it's for a non-profit high power FM station in Houston, TX. It's an all volunteer thing.
Land in the island state of Bullemia
True story- We used to have a rocket building club among some high school friends of mine, and would semi-regularly launch in the huge, mowed fields next to the JSC Saturn V.
:)
As we were not a proper rocket club, but a bunch of unsupervised geek-childs, the emphasis was on the crazy, unpredicatble, ovepowered, underfinned, prone to explode, etc, etc.
It so happened I built a series of rocket engine powered planes, most of which just spun around. However one made a very dramatic flaming high speed 500 foot long horizontal flight that ended in a head on collision with second stage of the Saturn V.
There was no visible damage to the space-capable behemoth, but my cardboard aeronautical absurdity crumpled and shattered from the blow!
It's too bad, what with the overboard paranoia and touristy admission charging space center they built, you can't even get out there anymore, much less have fire missiles of your own.
disclaimer- I did not aim my plane at the Saturn V, it homed in on its own!
The ones who really need cameras are the police. Not cameras they can turn off or walk away from, but worn cameras that record audio and video the entire time they are on duty, with exceptionally stiff penalties for blocking or disabling the camera.
This would protect the public from illegal searches, threats, breaking of your property, and general unprofessionalism (all of which I've personally seen from the police). It would protect the police by establishing a record of just what the cop saw- truly what the situation looked like from their perpspective.
Of course, there would have be ironclad safeguards, such as complete access all footage by the public, etc.
I agree! The fundamental danger to the viability of our civil society, is that the powers that be could use a system like this to identify the people most effective in anti-goverment/ anti-power groups. Right now, they are hesitant to take people out because there is a real cost and political danger to doing so. If they knew who eveyone was, what they were doing, who was most active, etc, they could make these choices much less cautiously.
As an example, I was at a dolpinarium protest when the cops clumsily planted a huge quantity of crack on an individual who was committing civil disobedience and blocking the street. Oops, the person they chose is the son of the CEO of a major bank. As shitty as it is, because of that he was about to get the kind of defense that nearly convicting the cops rather than the protestor.
Imagine if they had taken out Martin Luther King early on, etc, etc...
Maybe if we really can watch the watchers we'd be able to do something about it.
I guess you'll object to phase ii, where RFID implant sensors are integrated with facial recognition on these systems?
We are fortunate that the progressive activists of the 1890's (+-20 years), union organisers of the 1930's, etc, etc were not as defeatist. It seems like corruption has exploitation has to get real bad for people to take action strong enough to win. Then, we coast on their achievements for s while as it seems like a nondescript bit of 'the way things have always been' rather than a conciously worked-for change.
I do agree with you about the corporate welfare.
Fuck tha game. I want to play a new game.
It gets funny looks at work, but I put my gadgets in a trash bag when going to and from my car in my ethnic, drug infested neighbourhood.
Seriously though, when are we going to make a real effort to solve this problem? It's not inevitable unless we think it is. Living in the aforementioned neighbourhood in Houston, Texzs, I can tell you that for whatever reason, the cops make no serious effort to restrain the folks here from committing crimes. Allowing large parts of the city to remain human cancers, where crime is an accepted part of the culture kids grow up in, is one f-cked up way of running a society.
One night I wanted to watch internet TV in bed. I didn't own a laptop.. The furniture in my cramped apartment allowed no spot to set the 17" CRT except for the bed. My girlfriend and I share a full size mattress, so I had to hold the 17" monitor in my lap to watch it. Still, I enjoyed the experience.. though CRTs in bed do tend to flip over if you step right in front of them. You can flip them right ought of bed in fact!
People of our era like to be reductionist and imagine that all of these insanely complicated issues can reduce down to simplicities, like the employer/employee relationship you mention, or imaginary 'laws' like the invisible hand.
In reality each interaction between people, and individual choices exist in a roiling sea of interconnectedness. The consequences for each choice, or for system wide impositions like guilds, government, common practice, etc are multifaceted and complex.
So my question to the world is, when are we going to get over out 'vietnam complex' that expects failure from any attempt at social enginneering, while keeping faith in fantasy 'laws' that only seem to predict the world accurately less than half the time, and get down to the real work of at least trying to build a better world in everyone's interest?
The Victorians had much less fear of doing this, and considering where they started and where they ended, they accomplished a fuckload more than the current era seems to be able to do.
Whether is be through widespread collective grassroots activism, through focusing on the basics like getting philosophy education in public schools, or through forming something similar or different to unions, something needs to be done.
Anytime you try, you win some and you lose some, but to give up and act like it's all beyond us as a society will surely get us all fucked in the ass sooner, or later.
Unless your acts echo down the chain of cause and effect.. the cyberpunk view.. Jesus encoding himself into the form of his religion and church.. an aspect of him living on..
-that meaning and purpose is somehow built into the nature of the universe, as it was/is for the religious point of view. Even among most atheists and existentialists we've carried this over without realizing it. It forces you down some rationally untenable paths..
I suspect that we can construct rationally very stong points of view about what is 'right and wrong', 'good and bad' without abandoning a sense of reason and the righteousness to compare competing views for their strength. On the other end of things, I also think that we overestimate the infallibility we place on the so called hard sciences.
Here's a heresy for you- the victorians were in some ways heroic for reaching for a better, more moral, more intellectual world than their grandparents had created. 20th century thought was largely a masturbatory wrong turn.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it for a while. eh?