Europe hasn't trusted in the america initiative 'for ages.' They trusted in it only since 1946 since they knew that without our support, Stalin have been rolling tanks into London by the end of the year. And where was your talkof powe balance when England was the #1 world power?
Though I agree, we shoudln't be a scared about the prospect of war as we are since because of it we allow oursleves to get bullied by little shits like North Korea, declaring war on china is a supid idea.
1. They have nukes, we've seen the tests.
2. They aren't as well equipped, but as the joke about Custer's last word go: "whoa, they got a lot of guys."
3. We wouldn't gain much from it. We'd have to nuke too much and guess where the fallout will blow. We shoudl nuke France. The falout would wipe out germany. Two birds, one stone. And let's face it: the french have just been asking for it lately.
In other words, american interest are a higher goal to us cause there are interests. And in case the last 14 years have passed you by, we own the fucking UN. They meet in our country, the vast majority of their military might is our troops, and we control all the effective policies. Name one war that the UN sent troops in that we didn't help out or agree with. We do whatever the hell we want and if you don't like it, tough. You think anyone here cares that ppl in France are protesting our war? The people of france don't vote for any of OUR leaders.
And why can't america be selfish? The rest of the world definitely is. Every country on earth is selfish and only looking out for its own good, why can't we? Screw international relations; I elect my leaders so that they will make MY life better, I didn't elect them so that Israel and Palestine would have someone to bitch at and blame when they can't solve their own fucking problems. The goal of the government is only world peace if world peace is good for us. If we could make the world a peaceful place by destorying ourselves, would we? No. Simply put, all countries are out for their own good and if you don't like it, tough.
illegal wars - No war is illegal while it is in the first or second person such as 'our war' or 'your war'. It is only the third person, 'their war' that it becomes an illegal one.
"History shows that the only time the US give a crap about what is happening to another country is when there are dollars to be made or protected."
Sure we made a lot of cash saving Kosovo, and putting troops in somalia.
"It's all bad."
When our democracy has purges, we blacklist a couple hundred suspected communists. When communism has purges, millions of people die. Stalin is responsible for the deaths of between 50-80 million russians, his own people. He thought the officer corp was going to try to overthrow him so in the early 30's had 3/4 of them either executed or sent to siberia. By stalin rules, you could and many did get shot or sent to siberia for such simple crimes as picking one grain of wheat off a wheat plant and eating it becuase you where starving. If you think you can compare the mass butchery of the communists, especially Mao and Stalin, to the corrupt politicains of america you either knwo nothing about history or don't knwo what bad really is.
"The military provide a framework for killing a lot of people. The US has the biggest, and most active." Last time I checked our miltary didn't try to kill civilians. Communism provides a framework for an agressive military that not only can but by definite will be forced to kill a lot of people. When people demonstrate, what do we do? We sent in police in riot gar with rubber bullets. When people demonstrate, what do the chinese do? Send in tanks with very real and deadly bullets and with no fear of using them on their own people. How many conutries did we invade during the cold war? There was the bay of pigs fiasco where we sent in others and didnt back them up. Cn't think of any others... Vietnam was started by north vietnam. We didn't invade vietnam, the north invaded and the south requested our help. We didn't invade north korea initially, they invaded the south and almost wiped it off the map. Afganistan? Invaded by the russians. Hungary and Poland? Invaded by the russians during ww2 and never let go. Who started the berlin crisis? I seem to remember it wa stalin who barricaded the city to starve it out. The cuban missle crisis? I seem to remember it was the russians putting icbms in cuba that it.
For the olympics, china bulldozed a bunch of peoples house and gave them zero compensation. They got a notice one day to leave and the next they came with bulldozers and flattened the place. At leats we pay the people we kick out of places. Activists who were at tianemon (sic?) square are still being held in prisons around china (the ones who haven't been shot) all for speaking out against their leaders. Every other week, china makes a hint of a move against its neighbor taiwan. I don't remembering the chinese sending toops on any peace keeping missions either. Where were they in kosovo? Somalia?
A few problems with your theory:
1. The netire world can't live at the standard we are living at. Why? The earth simpy can't support it, if nothing else, there is not enough land on earth to grow the amount of food the average american consumes and wastes. What about othe rplanets? Give me a break. Mars is simply too small to have the necessary atmosphere. Not enough gravity to hold an earth liek atmosphere.
2. An earlier article states that everyone in china has an eual oppurtunity. Never went outside hong kong, have you? Didn't know there was a rural china? Yep, and in many ways china is a third world nation in that respect.
3. "3WNs (third world nations), if they have sufficient means, will start supplying the ascendant new hegemonies with cheaper goods." At best, oil will runout in 50 years. China and india are both overburdening their water supplies and will cause a drought of biblical levels in the next fifty years (india in only 30). Tens to hundreds of millions are expected to die if something isn't doen now and guess what, nothing is. Global warming, food shortages, take your pick. Your theory would come true in a perfect world where the world remained the constant it has been for the last twenty years, but it won't. If nothing else, chinas political system that leaves no clear succession for its rulers will be its undoing. Ever see a chinese civil war? 1860's - 300-500 million ppl died.
4. The world is not a constant. The world has largely sidestepped and ignored the UN throughout the cold war and now that we have to actually play by its rules, many countries are becoming fed up by it. It is based on many invalid assumptions - that the world will never change from its current boundaries, and that the countries who do participate are capable of upholding the UN's mandates. We are supposedly still allies of Europe. It won't last. We are supposeldy still friends with China, that won't last either. The UN's worst assumption is that collectie security - the idea that when one country steps out of line, everyone else will act to stop them - simply doesn't work. We are already seeing its demise. Now instead of one country going to the UN to air its greivances and then have the UN look at the issue and make a descision, wer are instead seing the old system of grand alliances were one alliance goes to the UN with an issue and is opposed by another grand alliance. That is collective defense - that one alliance won't dare risk going to war against another. All we need is one issue where both sides refuse to give and we can say goodbye to the UN. The only thing keeping the world as it is is the threat of nuclear war and with the increassing number of nuclear countries and the increasing raalization that the super powers can't use the stockpiles they have, that glue is becoming unstuck. What did it take to make the world unstable? Three jets, 15 people, and 2 towers. The world is a house of glass and all its inhabitants are taking up the art of stone throwing. One hostile nuke detonation anywhere and it will all come tumbling down and with north korea, pakistan, india, and iran all having them and having the will to use them? It's slim pickins on the bomb.
In aperfect world, China will become like the united states and we will all work together with europe and the rest of the world to either bring a dystopia or a utopia but in the real world, there is a far greater chance of things getting messy. China launched a rocket and put a man in space? A kick start to the US space program? More likely a second cold war - this time in space as well as on earth. Rather than cheering we shoudl be building bomb shelters and puting our heads between our legs to kiss our asses goodbye.
Easily communicate in chinese? Not even the chinese can easily communicate with each other! They have dozens of different dialects. Even their central leaders aren't immune. Mao spoke in a dialect so obscure that even his close aids supposedly had diffculty understanding what he was saying. English is accepted as a global language not just becuase it is widely known but becuase there is really only one dialect of it. It is the same language in india, england, australia, and america. A minor difference in slang and thats it. Now take chinese, a language that has 32 POPULAR dialects. How many other countries outside fo china use chinese as thier main langauge? I can't name a single one. Chine might some day become a dominant super power (though there is a problem with that - its military and geography is really the only thing holding it together, the people of manchuria are nothing like the people of the gobi or lower china, one speaks manchurian chinese, the other cantonese, the devleopement of china might lead to being a superpower but there is an even graeter chance it ill lead to balkanization - think Roman Empire, Europe was once united but as it developed it became increaingly balkanized, think the arab world, it was once a central power but it too balkanized.)
The public will never go for it. You cannot tax air, not beauce it isn't feasible but because it would never be allowed. In the same way, once a perfect implementaion of the copyright and patent system is implemented, it will be annihilated from the law. The reason peopel allow it now is becuase of the many loop holes and imprefrefections inthe present system. If they were removed, people would npo longer waste their time trying to fix the implementation of it and finally start attacking the real cause, the system itself. However, let's say the american public's collective morality (or lack thereof) falls to the point where their love of money outweighed there own ethics. If such a system was implemented, it would not stand for long, not even a decade. With innovation stifled to the point of suffocation one of two things would happen:
1. The majority of people would simply reject the law, much as prohabition was rejected. Laws aren't independent of human beings, they are a social contract between the government and those goverened. If either takes too many liberties, the other acts as a counterbalance to nullify that aggresssion.
2. Another siociety working outside the system, another government or even a group of people who, as the article points out often, have dodged the system by not connecting the computer to the Internet, will have such a significant advantage over those who are enslaved by the systems suffocating rule that the system will have to modify itslef (or in this case self-destruct) in order to compete against them. People live in groups becuase the good accomplished as part of that group outweighs the negatives that that group presents as compared to working alone. Right now I can see a person with two computers: 1 free and 1 enslaved. You use the enslaved one to gather documents and then you set up a private peer to peer local network to place them on the free one (by technological trickery if necessary). Even if those documents are later erased off the enslaved, the free since it is never connected to the interent, only to your enslaved computer at times when it too is not connected ot the interenet, will still maintain those documents to be used as you see fit.
Simply put, ppl will accept the present system but taht does not mean they will also accept an extreme of that system. People will never go for it.
If they do however, what do you think will happen to the traditional media. When you can get pay per view, what will happen to the good old used book. I can smell the stench of gasoline and firemen already.
Are oversestimating the importance of this topic to the non tech public. Talk to non geeks and most really don't give a shit either way. They'll steal it if they can, if they can't big deal, they'll just go back to buying em.
The point I was making with television can best be summed up by Daniel Stern from City Slickers: "My father and I weren't very close. We couldn't normally talk to each other, but we could talk about baseball." That is the point I was trying to make. It's not the format, it's not the content; it's the fact it gives you a context and a shared experience from which you can build a dialogue or an aproach from. It gives you a base to build on.
1. Open Office
2. Real Player
3. Winamp
4. Getright
5. Norton AntiVirus/ Internet Security
6. mIRC
7. AIM
8. Quicktime
9. CD Extreme/Easy CD Creator Pro
10. ICQ
Simply put, knowledge alone is worthless if you do nothing with it. The man who spends his life learning but never using that knowledge is the same as a man who did not learn. In order to make any real (and good) difference, one has to relate to the culture they are in and that is the good TV does. A lot of TV is bad, but no TV can be just as bad.
Your example of reading a book and saying that reading that book didn't mystically change you is firstly, false, and secondly not even a proper comparison. Reading a book is not like being in physical contact with a person, let alone a close friend! What on earth does reading a book have to do with knowing a non-tv person.
The point I was trying to make was that there is more to a relationship than just respecting a person perspective and ideas, etc. When it comes to friends, most share a common experience or at least have some common interest that is shared between two people. You have to be able to understand where someone is coming from (as in what viewpoint) and understand them as a person in order to be able to relate to them. Perhaps the difficulty you have in understanding this is semantic: I define popular culture as the aspects of a culture that indivisuals of that culture share in common - common experiences, common knowledge, etc. Without knowing this, you can't interact meaningfully with them. For example, how could you interact with a club hopper without an understanding of such things as where they stand on the issues of alcohol, sex, and drugs? That's the point I was trying to make. TV gives us cues to these common experiences. They help us to understand the norms and give us the common knowledge that children who don't watch TV and don't spend time in a particular culture don't get - knowledge of a popular band is not useful in itself, but useful in that it helps you to relate with other people who share that interest and knowledge. Without those experiences, they have difficulty in relating to a culture just as you would with someone with which you hold no common interests.
I can see where your coming form with the circle of friends, its like that with anybody that has true friends. It's just the way you first stated it seemed that you didn't place anymore value on your relationships with your friends than your relationships with complete strangers.
The second false notion is this obsession you have with making a difference. Everything makes a difference. If you are referring to a level of how much a difference you make, then who on earth decides where that line is drawn? Seriously? It is totally subjective... Lastly, your twilight zone example is again off, because you are making the assumption that I am trying to make a difference in the world. I am not. I am indeed making a difference, and that is lovely. People are making a difference in me, and that is lovely too -- but I have no intent or drive to change the world into something I feel is better. That would be silly.
My so-called obsession with making a difference is not so much to make the world a better place as it is to be remembered. I have no doubt you have read the Epic of Gilgamesh and have a basic understanding of what drove the early heroes. Among their many charcateristics was the need to be remembered - it was one of the sole reasons they acted like they did. This was also a central theme in many ancient (and modern philosphies.) If no one remembers you and you make no difference, what meaning did your life have? The heroes of the ancient world were doers. They understood not only the urgency of life, that it doesn't last forever and so you better get to it, but that also life is meant to be lived. Read the Iliad, especially the conversation about what they would do if they could not die. The ancient greeks understood that sitting in your house all day and not doing anything was a waste of your life. They unfortunately didn't realize that sitting around thinking all day was a waste as well iuf that knowledge did not get passed on or change the world in some way(it was largely due to the static nature of their culture and saw it as the epitome of culture, they saw contempary change as bad and hence contempary doers as a danger.) Modern people have a fasincation with wasting their lives by not doing anything but enriching their own experience of life assuming that since they have a soul and death i
From what I understand, he didn't start to get ecentric till later in life when he began to experiment with mercury. He obviously experimented with it too much though since by the end of his life he was a raving lunatic. Too bad he sucked Halley in to, Halley was a great, some even think a better, scientist than Newton was. Then he fell into orbit around Newton...
Slashdot Mirror
Losers always whine about winners.
Europe hasn't trusted in the america initiative 'for ages.' They trusted in it only since 1946 since they knew that without our support, Stalin have been rolling tanks into London by the end of the year. And where was your talkof powe balance when England was the #1 world power?
Though I agree, we shoudln't be a scared about the prospect of war as we are since because of it we allow oursleves to get bullied by little shits like North Korea, declaring war on china is a supid idea.
1. They have nukes, we've seen the tests.
2. They aren't as well equipped, but as the joke about Custer's last word go: "whoa, they got a lot of guys."
3. We wouldn't gain much from it. We'd have to nuke too much and guess where the fallout will blow. We shoudl nuke France. The falout would wipe out germany. Two birds, one stone. And let's face it: the french have just been asking for it lately.
In other words, american interest are a higher goal to us cause there are interests. And in case the last 14 years have passed you by, we own the fucking UN. They meet in our country, the vast majority of their military might is our troops, and we control all the effective policies. Name one war that the UN sent troops in that we didn't help out or agree with. We do whatever the hell we want and if you don't like it, tough. You think anyone here cares that ppl in France are protesting our war? The people of france don't vote for any of OUR leaders.
Actually, at the moment they can only hit Los Angeles.
And why can't america be selfish? The rest of the world definitely is. Every country on earth is selfish and only looking out for its own good, why can't we? Screw international relations; I elect my leaders so that they will make MY life better, I didn't elect them so that Israel and Palestine would have someone to bitch at and blame when they can't solve their own fucking problems. The goal of the government is only world peace if world peace is good for us. If we could make the world a peaceful place by destorying ourselves, would we? No. Simply put, all countries are out for their own good and if you don't like it, tough.
Hell, why not just call him Mike? Screw spelling...
illegal wars - No war is illegal while it is in the first or second person such as 'our war' or 'your war'. It is only the third person, 'their war' that it becomes an illegal one.
"History shows that the only time the US give a crap about what is happening to another country is when there are dollars to be made or protected."
Sure we made a lot of cash saving Kosovo, and putting troops in somalia.
"It's all bad."
When our democracy has purges, we blacklist a couple hundred suspected communists. When communism has purges, millions of people die. Stalin is responsible for the deaths of between 50-80 million russians, his own people. He thought the officer corp was going to try to overthrow him so in the early 30's had 3/4 of them either executed or sent to siberia. By stalin rules, you could and many did get shot or sent to siberia for such simple crimes as picking one grain of wheat off a wheat plant and eating it becuase you where starving. If you think you can compare the mass butchery of the communists, especially Mao and Stalin, to the corrupt politicains of america you either knwo nothing about history or don't knwo what bad really is.
"The military provide a framework for killing a lot of people. The US has the biggest, and most active."
Last time I checked our miltary didn't try to kill civilians. Communism provides a framework for an agressive military that not only can but by definite will be forced to kill a lot of people. When people demonstrate, what do we do? We sent in police in riot gar with rubber bullets. When people demonstrate, what do the chinese do? Send in tanks with very real and deadly bullets and with no fear of using them on their own people. How many conutries did we invade during the cold war? There was the bay of pigs fiasco where we sent in others and didnt back them up. Cn't think of any others... Vietnam was started by north vietnam. We didn't invade vietnam, the north invaded and the south requested our help. We didn't invade north korea initially, they invaded the south and almost wiped it off the map. Afganistan? Invaded by the russians. Hungary and Poland? Invaded by the russians during ww2 and never let go. Who started the berlin crisis? I seem to remember it wa stalin who barricaded the city to starve it out. The cuban missle crisis? I seem to remember it was the russians putting icbms in cuba that it.
For the olympics, china bulldozed a bunch of peoples house and gave them zero compensation. They got a notice one day to leave and the next they came with bulldozers and flattened the place. At leats we pay the people we kick out of places. Activists who were at tianemon (sic?) square are still being held in prisons around china (the ones who haven't been shot) all for speaking out against their leaders. Every other week, china makes a hint of a move against its neighbor taiwan. I don't remembering the chinese sending toops on any peace keeping missions either. Where were they in kosovo? Somalia?
First to orbit a woman? Cassanova and Don Juan have the beat by cenuries and millenia dude.
A few problems with your theory:
1. The netire world can't live at the standard we are living at. Why? The earth simpy can't support it, if nothing else, there is not enough land on earth to grow the amount of food the average american consumes and wastes. What about othe rplanets? Give me a break. Mars is simply too small to have the necessary atmosphere. Not enough gravity to hold an earth liek atmosphere.
2. An earlier article states that everyone in china has an eual oppurtunity. Never went outside hong kong, have you? Didn't know there was a rural china? Yep, and in many ways china is a third world nation in that respect.
3. "3WNs (third world nations), if they have sufficient means, will start supplying the ascendant new hegemonies with cheaper goods." At best, oil will runout in 50 years. China and india are both overburdening their water supplies and will cause a drought of biblical levels in the next fifty years (india in only 30). Tens to hundreds of millions are expected to die if something isn't doen now and guess what, nothing is. Global warming, food shortages, take your pick. Your theory would come true in a perfect world where the world remained the constant it has been for the last twenty years, but it won't. If nothing else, chinas political system that leaves no clear succession for its rulers will be its undoing. Ever see a chinese civil war? 1860's - 300-500 million ppl died.
4. The world is not a constant. The world has largely sidestepped and ignored the UN throughout the cold war and now that we have to actually play by its rules, many countries are becoming fed up by it. It is based on many invalid assumptions - that the world will never change from its current boundaries, and that the countries who do participate are capable of upholding the UN's mandates. We are supposedly still allies of Europe. It won't last. We are supposeldy still friends with China, that won't last either. The UN's worst assumption is that collectie security - the idea that when one country steps out of line, everyone else will act to stop them - simply doesn't work. We are already seeing its demise. Now instead of one country going to the UN to air its greivances and then have the UN look at the issue and make a descision, wer are instead seing the old system of grand alliances were one alliance goes to the UN with an issue and is opposed by another grand alliance. That is collective defense - that one alliance won't dare risk going to war against another. All we need is one issue where both sides refuse to give and we can say goodbye to the UN. The only thing keeping the world as it is is the threat of nuclear war and with the increassing number of nuclear countries and the increasing raalization that the super powers can't use the stockpiles they have, that glue is becoming unstuck. What did it take to make the world unstable? Three jets, 15 people, and 2 towers. The world is a house of glass and all its inhabitants are taking up the art of stone throwing. One hostile nuke detonation anywhere and it will all come tumbling down and with north korea, pakistan, india, and iran all having them and having the will to use them? It's slim pickins on the bomb.
In aperfect world, China will become like the united states and we will all work together with europe and the rest of the world to either bring a dystopia or a utopia but in the real world, there is a far greater chance of things getting messy. China launched a rocket and put a man in space? A kick start to the US space program? More likely a second cold war - this time in space as well as on earth. Rather than cheering we shoudl be building bomb shelters and puting our heads between our legs to kiss our asses goodbye.
Thier language, the main thing that holds them together is also the main thing holding them back.
You want an example of how bad chinese is: the cultural revolution may have been started by mistake due to an error in translating something mao said.
Easily communicate in chinese? Not even the chinese can easily communicate with each other! They have dozens of different dialects. Even their central leaders aren't immune. Mao spoke in a dialect so obscure that even his close aids supposedly had diffculty understanding what he was saying. English is accepted as a global language not just becuase it is widely known but becuase there is really only one dialect of it. It is the same language in india, england, australia, and america. A minor difference in slang and thats it. Now take chinese, a language that has 32 POPULAR dialects. How many other countries outside fo china use chinese as thier main langauge? I can't name a single one. Chine might some day become a dominant super power (though there is a problem with that - its military and geography is really the only thing holding it together, the people of manchuria are nothing like the people of the gobi or lower china, one speaks manchurian chinese, the other cantonese, the devleopement of china might lead to being a superpower but there is an even graeter chance it ill lead to balkanization - think Roman Empire, Europe was once united but as it developed it became increaingly balkanized, think the arab world, it was once a central power but it too balkanized.)
Unlimited freedom without repsonsibility is equivalent to anarchy
But I like anarchy!
The public will never go for it. You cannot tax air, not beauce it isn't feasible but because it would never be allowed. In the same way, once a perfect implementaion of the copyright and patent system is implemented, it will be annihilated from the law. The reason peopel allow it now is becuase of the many loop holes and imprefrefections inthe present system. If they were removed, people would npo longer waste their time trying to fix the implementation of it and finally start attacking the real cause, the system itself. However, let's say the american public's collective morality (or lack thereof) falls to the point where their love of money outweighed there own ethics. If such a system was implemented, it would not stand for long, not even a decade. With innovation stifled to the point of suffocation one of two things would happen:
1. The majority of people would simply reject the law, much as prohabition was rejected. Laws aren't independent of human beings, they are a social contract between the government and those goverened. If either takes too many liberties, the other acts as a counterbalance to nullify that aggresssion.
2. Another siociety working outside the system, another government or even a group of people who, as the article points out often, have dodged the system by not connecting the computer to the Internet, will have such a significant advantage over those who are enslaved by the systems suffocating rule that the system will have to modify itslef (or in this case self-destruct) in order to compete against them. People live in groups becuase the good accomplished as part of that group outweighs the negatives that that group presents as compared to working alone. Right now I can see a person with two computers: 1 free and 1 enslaved. You use the enslaved one to gather documents and then you set up a private peer to peer local network to place them on the free one (by technological trickery if necessary). Even if those documents are later erased off the enslaved, the free since it is never connected to the interent, only to your enslaved computer at times when it too is not connected ot the interenet, will still maintain those documents to be used as you see fit.
Simply put, ppl will accept the present system but taht does not mean they will also accept an extreme of that system. People will never go for it.
If they do however, what do you think will happen to the traditional media. When you can get pay per view, what will happen to the good old used book. I can smell the stench of gasoline and firemen already.
Things to boycott:
1. RIAA - started after they shut down Napster
2. Napster - started after they restarted Napster
It's been gone since what, July of 2000? 3 years is one long nap...
Are oversestimating the importance of this topic to the non tech public. Talk to non geeks and most really don't give a shit either way. They'll steal it if they can, if they can't big deal, they'll just go back to buying em.
And this is something we didn't already know?
The point I was making with television can best be summed up by Daniel Stern from City Slickers: "My father and I weren't very close. We couldn't normally talk to each other, but we could talk about baseball." That is the point I was trying to make. It's not the format, it's not the content; it's the fact it gives you a context and a shared experience from which you can build a dialogue or an aproach from. It gives you a base to build on.
1. Open Office 2. Real Player 3. Winamp 4. Getright 5. Norton AntiVirus/ Internet Security 6. mIRC 7. AIM 8. Quicktime 9. CD Extreme/Easy CD Creator Pro 10. ICQ
If that's true, I got two bits that within 4 years there will a dozen extra restrooms on the moon too.
Simply put, knowledge alone is worthless if you do nothing with it. The man who spends his life learning but never using that knowledge is the same as a man who did not learn. In order to make any real (and good) difference, one has to relate to the culture they are in and that is the good TV does. A lot of TV is bad, but no TV can be just as bad.
Your example of reading a book and saying that reading that book didn't mystically change you is firstly, false, and secondly not even a proper comparison. Reading a book is not like being in physical contact with a person, let alone a close friend! What on earth does reading a book have to do with knowing a non-tv person.
The point I was trying to make was that there is more to a relationship than just respecting a person perspective and ideas, etc. When it comes to friends, most share a common experience or at least have some common interest that is shared between two people. You have to be able to understand where someone is coming from (as in what viewpoint) and understand them as a person in order to be able to relate to them. Perhaps the difficulty you have in understanding this is semantic: I define popular culture as the aspects of a culture that indivisuals of that culture share in common - common experiences, common knowledge, etc. Without knowing this, you can't interact meaningfully with them. For example, how could you interact with a club hopper without an understanding of such things as where they stand on the issues of alcohol, sex, and drugs? That's the point I was trying to make. TV gives us cues to these common experiences. They help us to understand the norms and give us the common knowledge that children who don't watch TV and don't spend time in a particular culture don't get - knowledge of a popular band is not useful in itself, but useful in that it helps you to relate with other people who share that interest and knowledge. Without those experiences, they have difficulty in relating to a culture just as you would with someone with which you hold no common interests.
I can see where your coming form with the circle of friends, its like that with anybody that has true friends. It's just the way you first stated it seemed that you didn't place anymore value on your relationships with your friends than your relationships with complete strangers.
The second false notion is this obsession you have with making a difference. Everything makes a difference. If you are referring to a level of how much a difference you make, then who on earth decides where that line is drawn? Seriously? It is totally subjective... Lastly, your twilight zone example is again off, because you are making the assumption that I am trying to make a difference in the world. I am not. I am indeed making a difference, and that is lovely. People are making a difference in me, and that is lovely too -- but I have no intent or drive to change the world into something I feel is better. That would be silly.
My so-called obsession with making a difference is not so much to make the world a better place as it is to be remembered. I have no doubt you have read the Epic of Gilgamesh and have a basic understanding of what drove the early heroes. Among their many charcateristics was the need to be remembered - it was one of the sole reasons they acted like they did. This was also a central theme in many ancient (and modern philosphies.) If no one remembers you and you make no difference, what meaning did your life have? The heroes of the ancient world were doers. They understood not only the urgency of life, that it doesn't last forever and so you better get to it, but that also life is meant to be lived. Read the Iliad, especially the conversation about what they would do if they could not die. The ancient greeks understood that sitting in your house all day and not doing anything was a waste of your life. They unfortunately didn't realize that sitting around thinking all day was a waste as well iuf that knowledge did not get passed on or change the world in some way(it was largely due to the static nature of their culture and saw it as the epitome of culture, they saw contempary change as bad and hence contempary doers as a danger.) Modern people have a fasincation with wasting their lives by not doing anything but enriching their own experience of life assuming that since they have a soul and death i
From what I understand, he didn't start to get ecentric till later in life when he began to experiment with mercury. He obviously experimented with it too much though since by the end of his life he was a raving lunatic. Too bad he sucked Halley in to, Halley was a great, some even think a better, scientist than Newton was. Then he fell into orbit around Newton...