Fat chance. Now he'll have his own talk show on Fox
The man doesn't appear to be entirely sane. It's near-impossible to tell if his ravings are the product of delusions - or just attempts to apply ANY potential perversion of logic to avoid the crop he's sown.
With the lunatic rambling this guy uses to defend his arguments, and all of his abuse of supposition in lieu of actual logic, I'm pretty sure no network would dream of giving him his own show.
Wait... did you say Fox?
Forget everything I just said then...
The ability to think quickly, manage a complex and changing battlefield environment, and not only defend the infrastructure to manufacture a large army but also maintain the flow of resources in order to feed that (hungry) tank machine - all add to the appeal of RTS games - and I'm a veteran of both turn-based and RTS wargames.
Turn-based strategy games are intellectually stimulating. It requires deep strategizing and planning, and can result in a good game that lasts days. They are also, regrettably, a bit boring. They lack the same shifting-puzzle nature that makes Chess a classic for the ages. There is a reason why the RTS market completely dominated the TBS market as soon as it became viable.
RTS games are a totally different animal. It's not as dry as a TBS game - the speed and constant activity give you a much more solid connection to the mind you are trying to defeat. Every moment of attention spent in one place is a gamble. There is no boredom - you never have to wait for a slow player. Additionally, it rewards quick thinking and resiliency in ways that TBS just can't compete with. I never broke a sweat during a TBS game, but there is no gaming experience like the nervous tension (often filled with chainsmoking) you experience when you have an entire army poised on the tip of an all-or-nothing assault.
Also, psychology is difficult to employ, and impossible to deploy well, in all but the very best TBS games. On the other hand, even the most poorly-designed RTS game allows for misdirection, confusion, and outright misleading your enemy.
The average RTS games, in my opinion, have generally been superior (in terms of entertainment) to all of the best TBS games I have played (and I have fond memories of Axis and Allies, Risk (if that counts), and of course a blast from the past - Ogre). Risk remains popular largely due to it's simplicity - more complex versions of it have been made for a very long time, but never stand the test of time.
I don't think many individual RTS games will last for long, largely because they are all based on a specific gimmick, story, or appearance. As a format, I think RTS will remain a major theme in games for the foreseeable future. TBS has already fallen by the wayside, no matter how much a few segments of the populations love them. The only way a specific RTS would last is if it were more generic - if it had fewer associations, and fell into the format of "army vs army" with less emphasis on story.
Also, I happen to be a tank rush aficionado. A great many have fallen, sobbing, before the unholy might of my inhuman efficiency.
Back when I was a WOW addict, I had a penchant for creating less-than-savory characters - for me roleplay was more about exploring the human psyche than it was about living out a dimestore-novel fantasy.
One element I tended to toss in was a tendency towards bigotry. My horde characters tended to have very specific uneducated beliefs about alliance races, and my main human character had a very detailed set of beliefs regarding night elves, along with a whole slew of slurs specifically for them.
The downside of all this is that, as I tended to accumulate others who acted like me, I noticed that some of them used in-game bigotry not as a critique of the real world, but as a euphemism for actual bigotry (as in the game race they were directing their racism towards was a stand-in for a very real race they harbored actual prejudice towards). It wasn't a social tool for exploring society - it was an excuse to let their private feelings roam free, anonymously, and only thinly-veiled.
As online worlds become more detailed, and more important to those in them, you can certainly expect to see some of the innate xenophobia of real people being expressed, but tailored to the game world. You can already see it: in WOW (a good example as it's successful), you already saw large-scale stereotyping based on race. These stereotypes didn't come out of nowhere - they had their origins in some of the tendencies of those who chose those races. Once they set in though, they were very hard to shake. They're not all negative, but then again some racial stereotypes are positive in nature, even if stereotyping itself is not beneficial to society.
Example: Night Elves (players) are often associated with some vanity, and are seen as less inclusive of other groups - elitists. In part, this is due to the game's storyline. It's also due to player types and their selections early in the game. It varies from server to server, but I saw this stereotype develop over time - and it became much more obvious recently while watching some friends (still deep in the throws of WOW addiction) playing. Distance makes some things more obvious.
Another example: Alliance players tended to view Horde players as being ruthless power-gamers who were out to ruin the gameplay of any Alliance player they encountered. They were seen as more organized, and both brutal and inherently unfair in their pvp tactics. Conversely, Horde players viewed most Alliance players as being childish and totally without honor of any kind - and viewed them as being horribly disorganized and untrustworthy. In the first few months of the game, this resulted in stratification - most players tended to play only one side, which made these beliefs stronger (even after the mechanics of this changed). I played both sides from the start, and was often amused at the way each side (as players) viewed the other.
That changed over time of course, as most of the player base eventually had alts on both sides. This reduced the stereotypes to something closer to story than actual belief.
Like real life, it's the separation and division that creates stereotypes, not simple differences. The more one segment of society is held apart from another, the more bigotry will take shape. It can form from minor differences in religion, culture, etc. Race itself is almost never a raw material - it's the cultural differences between races that are the cause (which is why racism is largely dying out in the US - because the differences are steadily shrinking).
I think that MMO's will ultimately be beneficial to society, in that it holds up a mirror to civilization.
Of course, that's only if society doesn't collapse due to a majority of the population being terminally addicted to MMO's.
They are honestly going to let Scientology get away with this bollocks? Wow. That sucks. It'd be funny to finally see themselves sucker punch their own faces by trying.
Now I'm left wondering if it was even them that sent them out in the first place.
Does anyone know anything about the "group" that sent them, and is there anything that actually ties it to them?
For all the reasons they'd have to do it, there's also a lot of people who'd like to embarrass that group by acting in their name.
Reading the (reasonable) YouTube rules for countering a takedown, a possible motive arises.
The material taken down is blatantly non-infringing. Any actual takedown attempt, for takedown sake, would just be minor harassment.
However... the act of countering a takedown ultimately requires that the video's poster actually identify themselves, for the purpose of further legal discussion/action. Any anonymity is lost at that point.
That is just a possible motive. It's a damned suggestive one, though.
Why are they to blame? There is no feedback mechanism to reward consumers for this behavior. Why should one consumer spend more on a locally produced product for a higher price, when the local person he enriches is likely just going to spend money on the foreign goods? The only way I know of to solve this is force, through protectionist policies.
The best courses of action are almost never actually rewarding, and feedback mechanisms usually only offer quick rewards for poor decisions (just ask any junkie, amateur day trader, or teenager).
Protectionist politics are mostly just band-aids applied when economic models are out of balance. It's like handing out vouchers for private schools instead of fixing the public ones.
One way to fix the problem? Make product packaging require a country-of-origin's flag on it, so it's obvious where people are sending their money. It won't make people buy local crap if it's still crap (and lately, our electronics suck), but a touch of low-key marketplace nationalism is healthy for any country.
Welcome to the markets of the 21st century! Every company hemorrhages cash just to stay operational, and everyone is owned by stockholders who are only interested in profit. If you're not expanding, you're losing - and if you lose more than a few times, you're done.
(and if you're not constantly on top of things, you'll be eaten alive by the pseudo-third-world, undisputed master of Cheap Plastic Crap(tm))
It's ultimately consumers who are to blame. Almost all of us would rather buy low-quality mass-produced items instead of a higher quality product that costs 10% more. We'd rather go for the comfort of eating at a major chain instead of a one-location restaurant (which usually costs about the same). We'll howl about trade deficits, but end up almost exclusively buying foreign-made products. We'll lament the effect of crushing steamroller BigBox stores, but don't even notice the smaller shops we drive by on the way there.
I'm as guilty as anyone else here, and you know that there's an extremely high probability that you are too - useless token gestures aside.
Illegal immigration has typically only been an issue whenever we start imposing heavy limits - during periods when we get testy or concerned about numbers. The only reason I support those limitations (when they're reasonable) is that we want a steady influx, not a massive wave all at once. A constant flow allows for easier integration, where waves result in ghettos and long-running separation (which is the very thing we do NOT want out of immigrants)).
Also, a great many immigrants of past periods were very illegal. They were supposed to check in "off the boat", and only land in certain ports, but many went ashore without doing so (since it was also common to be turned back, depending on the year). The record keeping was pretty bad back then, and I have more than a few trans-Atlantic "wetbacks" in my family history.
Ellis Island was a primary port of entry for a while, but it was also known for being an unpleasant way into the country - and an easy one to bypass. The total number of immigrants arriving always far exceeded the numbers that were actually processed - because they simply snuck in. This made easy deportation one of the easiest ways for police to deal with minor troublemakers.
I know racism been defined as an unword by the PC-right, but that's not going to stop me from identifying it when I see it. If you don't see the obvious racism in the GP post, then you are also a racist, and I don't expect to have a meaningful conversation with you.
We live in a wonderful world when we have to resort to calling "irritation directed at an ethnic group" racism. I remember when "racist" was a much stronger word.
I don't particularly agree with his post - it doesn't help that I have a number of friends who would be deported if the government noticed them - but I can't find any factual error with anything he said, because I've seen it first-hand.
I'm inclined to want this country to stay a "beacon of liberty". I don't want to view immigrants as a threat to my job and way of life - I view them as raw material, much like my own (Irish) immigrant ancestors who went through the exact same things.
However, simply labeling someone racist isn't an argument. For that matter, I don't believe he is a "racist" - that's abusing a buzzword, and betrays it's full meaning. He would be better labeled as a xenophobe - it's not the hispanic race or the indian race he's railing against, it's the fact that they are from another country, another culture. That's not racism. Saying he is as bad as a true racist is no different from saying a racist is no worse than a radical isolationist.
Of course, he may well be an actual racist - he was a bit vehement. The post itself, though, wasn't racist. That's just a cheap way of discarding what he said. Here's a better response.
* Where did your folks come from? How did they get to this country (as you can bet it wasn't the Mayflower)? How did they make a living?
The answer most people will give is the best way to deal with immigrant fears - since the vast majority of us are ourselves of immigrant origin.
Let them come, like they always have. The culture of the US, for better or for worse, is immigrant to it's core - and ALWAYS has been.
I am not sure what kind of source you want me to cite ? What claims do you dispute ? On most of these subjects, I found wikipedia citation sources (they are very complete on theological subjects) to be quite well-founded.
I think his response came from a minor cultural difference. In the US (where I'm assuming the grandfather post came from), Southern Baptists are among the most stringent of the "sane" varieties of fundamentalist (though it's always hard to equate religious fervor with insanity). They believe, at least on the surface, in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, and make it the primary focus of their beliefs, to the point of near-idolatry. That is purely an opinionated statement on my part, and I assure you it's members would disagree vehemently.:)
This focus is why, at least here, Fundamentalists (as a subset of Protestants) tend to be hostile towards anything that brings factual biblical data into question. It's not that they do not want to know the truth in greater clarity (especially as quite a few of them are very intelligent individuals), but that it brings the basis of their beliefs into question - primarily because their belief is centered on Received Truth rather than on theology itself. Unlike the Catholic Church, fundamentalists are more willing to reinterpret existing beliefs (and you see that, constantly, over the decades), but they are a stickler for details - things must have happened, verbatim, as seen in the Bible - leaving only human interpretation at fault.
You would believe, in these conditions, that the Church would try to find as much information on JC than possible but no, it is now an organism of its own, autonomous about its doctrine. They did not update their beliefs when it became apparent that 3 gospels come from a single source or when Thomas gospel was found.
On the other hand Catholics in the US tend to be less focused on biblical accuracy and more on theology - the nature of God, divine plans, etc. This is a primary reason why the sciences are far more accepted among Catholics than among Protestants here - because one isn't threatened (as their belief revolves around unquestioning faith in a deity itself - the why's, not the how's), while the other is (since their belief is based around the writings about that deity) is forced to accept some things as non-literal (which they do not care much for), or simply in error. Since it's always humans that err, not the Bible (since the Bible is the direct word of God), then the new information must be patently wrong.
Note that this is a blatant generalization, and does not apply to all strict Fundamentalists (and from what I've seen, doesn't apply to a significant portion of them - as long as they don't feel cornered over it).
On the other hand, when it comes to the Catholic Church, remember that while they aren't very involved in searching for the Ark or other evidence that events actually occurred (that's primarily protestant territory), they do expend a lot of money and time on the literary and historical study of biblical material. In movies they always seem eager to quash any new information, but in the real world they don't seem to suppress much - they just discount anything that they think is worthless.
A good example is the Gospel of Thomas. It's been known for a long time - it's not a new discovery. The difference is it's now embraced by popular fiction - which is what brought it back to the public eye. The Church didn't do much to supress or fight it - they just dismissed it as what it very likely is - one of many fascinating but ultimately irrelevant documents written by gnostics. Since it's not already an accepted part of the Bible, fundamentalists didn't even notice. Personally I think it's beautifully written - by people who were of a religion that borrowed from but was not even remotely Christianity. Read up on Gnostics - extremely interesting faith based on mysticism, the power of secret knowledge, and gleeful abuse of logic.
... or more people could do like me and get a motorcycle. Don't know how to ride? I got a bicycle a few weeks back (never rode one before) and started riding it around the neighborhood, then for short errands. Next up I'm taking a rider's training course (suggested for anyone, even if they've ridden before). After that there's just a few minor legalities (license, insurance) and then I get a motorcycle. 50+ mpg, and HOV lane all the way.:)
Down side is that, being a newly minted rider, I'd do best to work my way up to a full commute (I live in the suburbs - where there's next to no bus service or mass transit, and everything is a bit of a drive).
Words represent concepts - a class of object or person, a specific reference, an action, or a modification to any of these. Words are symbolic references to more complex ideas.
The more extensive your vocabulary, the better you can fine-tune communication. Words are tools. A simple screwdriver is good for most jobs, but you often find yourself using different screwdrivers for different tasks. Sometimes you want a jewelers screwdriver to work on your glasses. Other times you want a large flathead with a strong grip so you can apply torque. A band saw is just as much a tool as a drill, and serves very different purposes - it all depends on your need.
Sometimes, though, the job can only be done with a good solid sledgehammer.
Swear words are effectively sledgehammers.
For example, it is often required that you express distaste or anger - they're everyday emotions that you can't hide from, and they often need to be declared. You have a wide variety of words to use. Simple direct "base" words, like "Angry" or "Mad" get the basic point across but are far too generic to have any real meaning beyond the basic concept. Being basic words, though, they have more emotional impact. There are better words in the core vocabulary, such as "Furious" or "Irritated" - these allow finer grades of meaning, but trade this for a bit of power. As you go up the ladder, you can achieve more and more precise meanings, such as "irascible", "choleric", or "perturbed". In civil communications, these can describe your feelings to a great level of precision. They also lose almost all of their emotional power.
Say you've done something to anger me, in a situation where it's appropriate for me to express that anger. Not only that, but you're threatening me - in many circumstances counter-intimidation is the only intelligent response (since an appeal will often simply fail, and a first-strike is usually not acceptable).
There are three basic routes you could follow.
Do as many well-educated verbose geeks will do, and respond with a well-spoken and wordy response that applies logic and fine shades of meaning to each and every word. In an emotional situation, this is generally useless and shows intelligence but very little understanding of real-world social interaction.
You can apply your vocabulary, abstaining from actual cursing, but choosing your words for effect. Phrases like "choking on your own blood" or "cripple you for life" keep the wording short and simple, and don't require degrading language. The problem is it's very difficult for most intelligent people to intimidate intelligently without being overtly threatening yourself. This is usually the best course, but it's also the most risky.
Alternately, a simple "Fuck you", or "back off asshole" will usually work much better. While cussing can fan the flames, once the individuals are already angry then a little cussing really doesn't add much to it. Quite the opposite - degenerating into schoolhouse taunts does a very good job of releasing tension (which is almost always what most fights are about) without actually hitting eachother.
Vocalization is a mammal concept (at least the way we use it). Speech is a purely human concept. Cussing, though, is most definitely a primate concept - chimps taught sign language invent their own forms very quickly. When you cuss, you tap into primal emotions, for better or for worse. Almost every association you have for any swear word is animal in nature.
That's why swearing is unacceptable. It has nothing to do with polite society, or problem resolution. It's for the same reason why nakedness offends (because a naked human body loses it's veneer of civilization - naked humans look like any other animal). For the same reason why many cultures dislike extensive facial hair or long scalp hair (it's a reminder that we're still just animals). It's why virtually all of our basic laws - both religious and civil - primarily focus on covering up for t
The truly hard thing about living in a time when humanity is on the cusp of a second renaissance pertaining to knowledge and the ability to push beyond is the holdouts who prevent the progress. Litigate it, I say!
Let's see:
We have mastered the atom, we can grow food in what used to be inhospitable deserts, we can cure (and barely notice) the vast majority of lethal diseases, we can make premature infants live - and the elderly live longer. We can cross the globe in hours, go to the moon, and hurl probes beyond the solar system. We can rebuild even the most gruesome injuries (if we can reach the injured quickly enough), we virtually all own computers that make the giant machines of our parents look like calculators, literacy is at an all-time high, and we can give our pets medical care that our grandparents couldn't imagine. Every day, we are bombarded by more products of human imagination than were possible in a year a few generations back. Every single area of the arts now enjoys patronage and levels of activity unimaginable during the last renaissance, and for all of the inevitable garbage there are works that are without a doubt among the finest our species has ever produced. We live longer, do more, and through the wonders of technology, lead richer, fuller, lives.
We are in that renaissance now - at least, we are in relative comparison to the previous one.
But trust me, understanding a bit more about the human genome won't really make our lives that much better, because technology and science bring incremental improvements, but never societal epiphany.
Consider: Thanks to the wonders of technology, most of the population is now literate... but the common reading level is frighteningly low - 6th grade level, last I heard. The standard vocabulary has many technical terms, but fewer fine shades of meaning. While it's true that the vast majority can now read, that's all they can do. Shakespeare was directed at a post-medieval common population with limited literacy (due to lack of books) but with the capacity to see the subtext - but today most of the population can no longer read between the lines (even when translated into modern English) - and has to have it grossly spelled out for them in a visual format (with most of the content lost).
Consider: Medical science has developed by leaps and bounds, we can cure almost every disease we know, and are now focused on those that are of far less importance. We even have the luxury of bemoaning the (historically, in ratio to the population) minor deaths caused by AIDS, Cancer, and other incurables, because death by disease is no longer the hard every-day reality it once was for most people - most of us have to watch the news for that. We eat better, and are individually more healthy. But... our lifespan has only improved slightly, we now die of old but previously-uncommon causes, and a significant portion of the population lives with problems that we can sustain indefinitely (often in torment), but not fix. We revel in how young the middle aged appear today, but ignore the fact that they will still live, if accidents and disease don't kill them, about as long as their grandparents did - and little more. And accidents - brutal, meat-mangling, horrific accidents - are now more likely to kill them than ever before.
Consider: We live in a land of plenty. There is more food, and better distribution of that food, than has ever existed - globally. There are farms in the middle of deserts, breeds of corn, wheat, and other plants far superior to those of previous centuries, and better knowledge of nutrition. Those who live in breadbaskets are doing very well - if they choose. Yet large areas of the world are now constantly on the edge of starvation - because all those medical advances have made our population explode, and because our technology now allows small and ill-equipped groups of individuals to devastate entire regions, destabilize entire cultures, and throw m
When you're deciding on who gets human rights, and who doesn't, you have to err on the side of caution.
For example, assuming wild swings in opinion over time (as tends to happen), would you be more concerned about chimpanzees being granted full human rights (something I consider overly drastic), or about the severely retarded (and I mean severely - minimally functional vs a funny-looking slow guy who can't make it on his own) having their rights downgraded due to missing critical elements of a human mind?
I'm not personally concerned about the fate of an embryo - it's not quite a "baby" yet. I AM concerned about the precedents set by it's fate, and the inevitable results of applying too much logic to the value of human life. Your life only has as much value as society gives it, and the only safe standards have to be overly accepting - otherwise you see how quickly they can erode.
Another issue... are these embryo's property? If some experimenter chose not to terminate, and had the technology to keep it going, at what point would they cross a line? Definitely not sentience, as it would be very easy to prevent a developing human from ever having that level of intelligence. Would YOU like to see a number of purposefully brain damaged homo sapiens vat grown for medical experimentation?
Sad thing is, I'm pretty certain that's the future. When opportunity meets ethics, ethics never wins (given time).
My hope is that being an idiot will finally be looked down on. I think it's starting to happen. Think back to 10 years ago and how fashionable it was to say stuff like "Bah! Computers! I don't get why I need them". Now if you know about something that is new and tech heavy you are looked up to more then looked down on.
Most people will gauge behavioral norms based on what they see others doing - peer emulation. If a large percentage of their peers are known to engage in a specific interest or activity, it's socially acceptable - no matter what it is, in any society. Bandwagon effect. Instead of assuming that anything unusual or rarely seen is specifically abnormal, the average person will base abnormality on what a small (but identifiable) segment of their peers enjoy but do not share with the majority. Anything else that can't be tied to a social group of any kind is not readily classifiable and thus can't be easily stereotyped.
When computers were a rarity, and those versed in them even more so, the public had no clear stereotype for geeks (at least the computational variety). As their numbers increased in everyday life, an identifiable patterns emerged - and their segment of the population eventually became large enough to transition from a socially unclassified group - to a full blown stereotype. They were assigned a social caste.
When a minority are able to understand a thing that the minority cannot, they are viewed as separate. Reactions to them will usually be some form of awe or mystification (geeks definitely got that treatment), or social marginalization (since at that point there are differences for the majority to persecute). That awe and persecution of any minority group not in power is an old story, and one that everyone experiences growing up (social minority kids getting together more out of mutual exclusion than shared interests, and the popular kids living in mortal fear of the very real threat that any perceived abnormality would destroy their social standing).
The fact that it's no longer uncool to show skill in computers is due, more than anything else, to the fact that most of the population is now exposed to them, and share at least some skill.
Being an idiot will only be acceptable for as long as it's shared by any particular peer group. Reality TV, for example, makes things worse - not by making people more stupid, but by making them feel that stupidity is normal, and that any attempt to change threatens to remove the safety blanket of normalcy.
Unless we begin testing every individual, and terminating anyone below a required intellectual ability, that will never end. Since we can't do that without demolishing every the underpinnings of freedom (ie the basic right to your own life as you want it), we'll just have to live with the fact that the majority will always be of average intelligence - and "idiocy" will always be judged based on what average intelligence is at any given time.
Also, if you think geeks are immune to majority-driven peer pressure, why don't you fire up some Cindy Lauper on your speakers (in the office), and see how long you can take the non-existant pressure.:) Hell, if you've got some real balls, how about some Tiffany.
Thomas Jefferson said laws should be written in plain English, because laws exist to serve the People, and need to be understood by the same.
Makes sense to me. Why insert a bunch of flowery language just to say, "It is wrong to enter another man's household."
I agree in principle, and to a great extent this country's legal language is purposefully more accessible than what you see in many other industrialized nations. However...
The example statement you gave implies that it is wrong for me to come over to a friend's home, at their invitation. It also makes the job of a plumber, cable repairman, or even a cop serving a proper warrant, a criminal. It's too vague, and says nothing about what circumstances it's meant to apply to. Common sense would suggest that some things are ok, but in that case why even write it down at all? It also means that someone arguing against it has no information on it's intent or the logic that drove it.
Most laws, at least the well-written ones, try to be as specific as possible. For instance, you should add the qualifier "without the consent of the owner". That allows for cases of permission. But then you have to clarify "consent". A written and signed document is extreme, and would make for hardship. Spoken consent is the norm, though at some point (either as an additional clarification, or something in another law that can be drawn as a reference) the definition of "consent" has to be laid out - or the a burglar's attorney would have an easy time finding a loophole. Also, who is the owner? If a husband's name is on the house, does that mean his wife can't invite anyone inside? What about his children (inviting either another child or an adult). What if the house is rented? That might suggest that you can't bring company over without consent from the actual property owner.
There are common sense answers, but laws don't work well if they rely on common sense for anything except unlikely or simply unforeseen situations.
Then there's the matter of "wrong". Yes, it's wrong, under many circumstances, to enter another man's house. That makes a burglar bad. Very bad. Did they commit a crime? What about a friend who spreads lies about you in order to undermine your social standing? That's wrong too, and there are laws regarding slander and libel, but it's not a criminal act. What if another friend is told an important, harmless, but not legally protected, secret - and disseminates that information immediately afterwards? That's just plain wrong - but no law will ever cover it, and good luck getting a court to involve itself.
Communications with an outside non-legal party should be written in as plain English as possible, but this requires far more care and skill than a standard legal document, as anything said can be held as binding in court - meaning every single ambiguity can be turned against it's intent. On the other hand, ambiguity takes even more skill to hide in a standard legal text (much like sophistry took more skill in Latin and Greek due to the structure of those languages).
Luckily judges usually have the authority to call bullshit when ambiguity is obviously abused. They don't always use it, but then again, judicial skill varies as well.
They won quite a few. It's that very success that woke people up to the reality of what this group was doing.
On a side note, my wife took a look at the ruling I was reading and asked how I could understand any of that. My reply that judicial rulings are usually a far easier read than affidavits and motions got me thinking...
Has anyone else noticed, on their end, that actually reading through court documents on the web has given them a firmer grasp of legal terms and syntax than they had before? For instance, I still only have a layman's understanding of law, but what used to look like meaningless legal mumbo-jumbo is starting to look more and more like verbose (but logical) legal whitepapers and RFC's.
Well, -usually- logical. (*cough*SCO*cough)
br.
Either way, do you think that the increasing availability of court papers results in at least some increase in legal literacy?
Obviously you do not understand basic meteorology. Higher average temperatures, while bad in and of themselves, will also cause temperatures to drop in places they have previously been higher in. Also, most models I'm aware of put a catastrophic, possibly extinction-level event out between ten and one hundred years. In the lifetime of a planet, that's not very long at all. I fail to see how a time line that short should not scare anyone shitless.
While I can easily see (as a layman) how an increase in temperatures could destabilize things enough to result in some drops, I have never seen the increasing ferocity of winter tied well to global warming - except from sources I wouldn't put any faith in. I also don't remember ever hearing that kind of idea bounced around in the mainstream until it after The Day After Tomorrow came out - which makes me extra skeptical (sort of like how bad Dinosaur science started showing up in the news after Jurassic Park came out).
As for extinction-level events... we're in one now. The spread of humans across the globe resulted in the (geologically instant) extinction of almost all large mammals across the face of the planet - leaving mosly the African species (which evolved to deal with predatory monkeys), bears (too badass for our ancestors), and mass-herd animals like buffalo (and most of those went as well). This was all before history even began. We're wiping out species so fast that it hurts to even think about it. We're very nearly finished with our closest relatives as it is. It's not a modern problem - though population growth and pollution are the main causes now (and pollution is less of a danger than we thought - go get your hair tested for mercury levels. According to 1950's medical knowledge, most of us shouldn't even be alive at this point).
Could it be, that by using fossil fuels we release more of certain elements into the atmosphere and those increased warming activities are occurring because of that utilization? Let me know if you somehow still don't get that, unless you're just in denial.
Oh, it's a distinct possibility. However, it requires two things:
* All solid models of global warming require a considerable amount of time, as the insulating effect of greenhouse gases is very small, and operate on a timescale of centuries. It's possible we were wrong, and if the temperature truly leaps, that becomes more likely.
* It also requires an actual warming trend, rather than the patchwork we see now. We see glaciers melting, as well as polar icecaps. We also see cooling trends in some of the hottest places on earth. We're seeing record high temperatures all over the world, but also record lows.
Logically, this suggests not warming, but instability. Did people think we lived in a magic time when the world we knew would remain the same forever - even though history shows that there is no "norm"? This can also be caused by human causes, and I assure you within the next hundred years that will be reality, but I'm honestly more afraid of the unusual tectonics and solar activity we started seeing at right around the same time than I am about CO2.
Also, one additional bit of info. Please feel free to verify. CO2 has increased by 31% since the start of the industrial revolution - and is projected to require far higher amounts to have any appreciable effect. Methane has a far higher GWP than CO2, meaning it's more damaging greenhouse-wise. It has increased by 150% - primarily due to agriculture (both plant growth and livestock). You don't hear much about methane because it serves no political motives to fight it.
In other words, while fossil fuels are a major factor in greenhouse gas emissions, it plays a very small role compared to the agricultural requirements of supporting 6+ billion people. That doesn't make for great news, though. In the short run, anyway. In the long run, CO2 has more lasting effects than any of the other GG's - so don't worry, Big Oil will be properly blameable for the next few centuries.
Again, please verify, then go watch An Inconvenient Truth, analyze it's logic (or lack thereof) and then go compare it to REAL ecology like Silent Spring (which has scared the living hell out of people for decades, and backed up it's assertions with verifiable evidence).
Y'know, I've noticed over the years that there is a high degree of overlap between people who deny human-caused global warming and those who cannot spell.
The most common argument against any questioning of global warming is to claim that the questioner is somehow not intelligent enough to understand. It's second only to immediately accusing any questions of being paid for by Big Oil.
Disregarding GM-Hath-Come theories as preposterous isn't a wise move, but blind acceptance of what the media tells you to believe, in the absence of hard evidence (such as an impossible-to-hide global warming trend that can actually withstand scrutiny and debate), is just as foolish. There's plenty of suggestive evidence, but suggestive doesn't cut it when it comes to claims of absolutes.
The changes are suddenly coming very fast, and people want to know why - even though there's some pretty friggin scary things going on right now (such as marked increases in tectonic activity, unexplained changes in solar activity that violate 200 years of observation, and other observable items that have nothing to do with pollution).
(on a side note, while CO2 is the popular (and quite effective) greenhouse gas, it's not the one you have to worry about. Methane is far more effective at the job, and is put out in massive quantities - by agriculture.)
I agree but I would also add that there is absolutely no proof that we are contributing significantly to the warming trend. I'm sure we have some effect, *all* lifeforms affect their environment. I'm also sure it's a good thing to cut down on pollution, but it's NOT a good thing to play chicken little when we haven't a clue about the climate long term and have very little history to compare it to.
Be careful saying that. You're likely to get yourself harassed, blacklisted, and shunned for such politically incorrect remarks.
I fully believe that the greenhouse effect is a simple matter of physics. I also believe that the effects, as we know them, do not occur rapidly. I also know that, historically, the climate is NOT stable - whoever said that it's been stable for most of history simply does not know history (Nineteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death being one example, the total environmental collapse of mesoamerica and the middle east, the sudden shift that made Europe more habitable and helped lead to the Rennaisance, etc etc etc).
In other words, yes our pollutants will have a very real effect on our climate. There is no free lunch. But, those effects belong to our children and grandchildren - what you see today is the normal cycle of change - but in a highly connected world prone to panic and fantasy, and overly willing to lay blame anywhere it can.
It may not be all bad though... it might scare us into actually controlling ourselves - before the bill actually shows up.
The lack of game development in Houston is one reason why I've never even tried for a game dev job. There is a glut of development job posting around here, but it's virtually all business logic, web design, and medical. Nothing stimulating - just work for (hopefully) decent pay.
I'm sniffing around at the developer job market lately, but it's hard to get an actual idea of what is a good figure to ask for in terms of salary. My current salary is laughable (especially considering 8 years of heavy and varied experience), but I also work at an ISP/Datacenter (an industry that never pays well).
The hardest part of making the leap to actually start pursuing jobs is... what kind of salary should I ask for? Historically, I've asked for amounts so low that it's ended up a ripoff, but I have absolutely no reliable idea of what people make - especially.Net programmers (who can switch to Perl, PHP, ASP, VB, C++, x86 Assembly - and can admin a unix or windows box to boot). I don't trust headhunters, and the job sites I look at give wildly varying "standards". Most job postings don't even suggest a figure.
Any suggestions on how to identify a reasonable price tag to put on myself?
Why is he abusing drugs? Absent draconian drug prohibition laws, heroin would be cheap. The alleged crime that is associated with heroin usage is largely the fault of the current drug laws. What damage is he doing to his body? Go ahead, do the research. I'll wait... Morphine derivates, unlike alcohol and tobacco (both legal) and amphetamines, etc., aren't really damaging to the body. The biggest danger is secondary infections or diseases - hepatitis, AIDS, etc. That danger would be almost entirely eliminated if we abandoned the war on drugs. Another common problem is malnutrition due to the combined effect of the drugs appetite suppression and the cost of the drugs. The third danger - overdose - is largely a product of the underground (and thus variable and unsanitary) distribution system. In other words, make heroin legal so that there's a safe, clean and reliable supply and make sure that the users eat regularly and there is very little harm in heroin use or even addiction.
If the average person could be entrusted to be able to make occasional use of heroin, stay out of public while doped up, and not cause a problem, then I'd see nothing seriously wrong with it.
Since it's become glaringly obvious over the past few decades that the average individual does not have the ability to keep a powerful drug like heroin under control, the nature of the drug changes. Unlike many other common illegal drugs (such as cocaine, marijuana, etc), you don't see many ex-users taking it lightly. While cocaine can be addictive, it doesn't seem to be able to overpower normal adults who show basic intelligence in it's use. I was shocked when I initially saw just how commonplace it was, but I didn't see many people fall to it. I only knew a few who showed anything like a biological tendency towards addiction, and they usually learned their lesson early on. I don't know a single pothead who I would say is truly addicted to pot - at worst, it becomes a crutch, and usually it's dropped as soon as the user has a serious desire to do so.
Even crack, the ultimate boogeyman of drugs, is exaggerated. It's powerfully addictive, but without regular use the addictive properties are easily dismissed (much like meth, which is primarily addictive once you turn it into an energy boost instead of just fun - the exact same mistake I saw every single time).
Heroin, on the other hand, is notorious. This isn't just due to the media milking it (and lately they're not - crack and meth are so much more dramatic) or the government spreading lies. Heroin is the only major drug I have ever seen where you can fully expect to be warned off of it by those actively using it. It's not a one-shot-and-you're-hooked drug (the favorite exaggeration of the past few administrations), but it's still not far from the truth. Unlike almost every other drug that relies on an endorphin boost for kicks, opiates are the primary class that specialize almost entirely in an endorphin rush - one far more powerful than that produced by any other street drug. Including crack.
Here's what it all comes down to. Any drug that toys with endorphin release is very dangerous - even when handed out by a doctor. Anything that provides a powerful release quickly exceeds the ability of normal human beings to turn it down. There are controlled heroin users out there, but the vast majority do not stay that way very long.
Personally, I've never touched the stuff. I touched just about everything else a while back, though, and I've definitely "walked the streets of Babylon" with a number of close friends - a frightening number of which are no longer alive. I somehow managed to avoid serious trouble, and came out the other side with a fairly laid-back attitude towards most street drugs. Most.
Heroin is a substance that has no good reason to exist, at present. It was designed for medical use, but proved too dangerous for doctors to harness. It hits a mammal where they're weakest - and humans are no
No... most regrettably, Insurrection has long-since beaten Final Frontier in the Worst Trek Movie Ever competition.
The difference between the two, on my end, is that I've watched FF at least once since buying it. I have started Insurrection twice, but never got more than 30 minutes into it. It was that bad.
Please note that the only reason I own either one is that I had two gaping holes in my Trek collection that had to be filled, regardless of how dirty I felt when I bought them.
Final Frontier proved that Shatner can't direct as well as Nimoy. Insurrection proved that, while Shatner deserved a beating for his mistake, someone else deserved a firing squad.
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Fat chance. Now he'll have his own talk show on Fox
The man doesn't appear to be entirely sane. It's near-impossible to tell if his ravings are the product of delusions - or just attempts to apply ANY potential perversion of logic to avoid the crop he's sown.
With the lunatic rambling this guy uses to defend his arguments, and all of his abuse of supposition in lieu of actual logic, I'm pretty sure no network would dream of giving him his own show.
Wait... did you say Fox?
Forget everything I just said then...
The ability to think quickly, manage a complex and changing battlefield environment, and not only defend the infrastructure to manufacture a large army but also maintain the flow of resources in order to feed that (hungry) tank machine - all add to the appeal of RTS games - and I'm a veteran of both turn-based and RTS wargames.
Turn-based strategy games are intellectually stimulating. It requires deep strategizing and planning, and can result in a good game that lasts days. They are also, regrettably, a bit boring. They lack the same shifting-puzzle nature that makes Chess a classic for the ages. There is a reason why the RTS market completely dominated the TBS market as soon as it became viable.
RTS games are a totally different animal. It's not as dry as a TBS game - the speed and constant activity give you a much more solid connection to the mind you are trying to defeat. Every moment of attention spent in one place is a gamble. There is no boredom - you never have to wait for a slow player. Additionally, it rewards quick thinking and resiliency in ways that TBS just can't compete with. I never broke a sweat during a TBS game, but there is no gaming experience like the nervous tension (often filled with chainsmoking) you experience when you have an entire army poised on the tip of an all-or-nothing assault.
Also, psychology is difficult to employ, and impossible to deploy well, in all but the very best TBS games. On the other hand, even the most poorly-designed RTS game allows for misdirection, confusion, and outright misleading your enemy.
The average RTS games, in my opinion, have generally been superior (in terms of entertainment) to all of the best TBS games I have played (and I have fond memories of Axis and Allies, Risk (if that counts), and of course a blast from the past - Ogre). Risk remains popular largely due to it's simplicity - more complex versions of it have been made for a very long time, but never stand the test of time.
I don't think many individual RTS games will last for long, largely because they are all based on a specific gimmick, story, or appearance. As a format, I think RTS will remain a major theme in games for the foreseeable future. TBS has already fallen by the wayside, no matter how much a few segments of the populations love them. The only way a specific RTS would last is if it were more generic - if it had fewer associations, and fell into the format of "army vs army" with less emphasis on story.
Also, I happen to be a tank rush aficionado. A great many have fallen, sobbing, before the unholy might of my inhuman efficiency.
Back when I was a WOW addict, I had a penchant for creating less-than-savory characters - for me roleplay was more about exploring the human psyche than it was about living out a dimestore-novel fantasy.
One element I tended to toss in was a tendency towards bigotry. My horde characters tended to have very specific uneducated beliefs about alliance races, and my main human character had a very detailed set of beliefs regarding night elves, along with a whole slew of slurs specifically for them.
The downside of all this is that, as I tended to accumulate others who acted like me, I noticed that some of them used in-game bigotry not as a critique of the real world, but as a euphemism for actual bigotry (as in the game race they were directing their racism towards was a stand-in for a very real race they harbored actual prejudice towards). It wasn't a social tool for exploring society - it was an excuse to let their private feelings roam free, anonymously, and only thinly-veiled.
As online worlds become more detailed, and more important to those in them, you can certainly expect to see some of the innate xenophobia of real people being expressed, but tailored to the game world. You can already see it: in WOW (a good example as it's successful), you already saw large-scale stereotyping based on race. These stereotypes didn't come out of nowhere - they had their origins in some of the tendencies of those who chose those races. Once they set in though, they were very hard to shake. They're not all negative, but then again some racial stereotypes are positive in nature, even if stereotyping itself is not beneficial to society.
Example: Night Elves (players) are often associated with some vanity, and are seen as less inclusive of other groups - elitists. In part, this is due to the game's storyline. It's also due to player types and their selections early in the game. It varies from server to server, but I saw this stereotype develop over time - and it became much more obvious recently while watching some friends (still deep in the throws of WOW addiction) playing. Distance makes some things more obvious.
Another example: Alliance players tended to view Horde players as being ruthless power-gamers who were out to ruin the gameplay of any Alliance player they encountered. They were seen as more organized, and both brutal and inherently unfair in their pvp tactics. Conversely, Horde players viewed most Alliance players as being childish and totally without honor of any kind - and viewed them as being horribly disorganized and untrustworthy. In the first few months of the game, this resulted in stratification - most players tended to play only one side, which made these beliefs stronger (even after the mechanics of this changed). I played both sides from the start, and was often amused at the way each side (as players) viewed the other.
That changed over time of course, as most of the player base eventually had alts on both sides. This reduced the stereotypes to something closer to story than actual belief.
Like real life, it's the separation and division that creates stereotypes, not simple differences. The more one segment of society is held apart from another, the more bigotry will take shape. It can form from minor differences in religion, culture, etc. Race itself is almost never a raw material - it's the cultural differences between races that are the cause (which is why racism is largely dying out in the US - because the differences are steadily shrinking).
I think that MMO's will ultimately be beneficial to society, in that it holds up a mirror to civilization.
Of course, that's only if society doesn't collapse due to a majority of the population being terminally addicted to MMO's.
They are honestly going to let Scientology get away with this bollocks? Wow. That sucks. It'd be funny to finally see themselves sucker punch their own faces by trying.
Now I'm left wondering if it was even them that sent them out in the first place.
Does anyone know anything about the "group" that sent them, and is there anything that actually ties it to them?
For all the reasons they'd have to do it, there's also a lot of people who'd like to embarrass that group by acting in their name.
Reading the (reasonable) YouTube rules for countering a takedown, a possible motive arises.
The material taken down is blatantly non-infringing. Any actual takedown attempt, for takedown sake, would just be minor harassment.
However... the act of countering a takedown ultimately requires that the video's poster actually identify themselves, for the purpose of further legal discussion/action. Any anonymity is lost at that point.
That is just a possible motive. It's a damned suggestive one, though.
The DMCA needs to be overhauled. Badly.
Why are they to blame? There is no feedback mechanism to reward consumers for this behavior. Why should one consumer spend more on a locally produced product for a higher price, when the local person he enriches is likely just going to spend money on the foreign goods? The only way I know of to solve this is force, through protectionist policies.
The best courses of action are almost never actually rewarding, and feedback mechanisms usually only offer quick rewards for poor decisions (just ask any junkie, amateur day trader, or teenager).
Protectionist politics are mostly just band-aids applied when economic models are out of balance. It's like handing out vouchers for private schools instead of fixing the public ones.
One way to fix the problem? Make product packaging require a country-of-origin's flag on it, so it's obvious where people are sending their money. It won't make people buy local crap if it's still crap (and lately, our electronics suck), but a touch of low-key marketplace nationalism is healthy for any country.
Welcome to the markets of the 21st century! Every company hemorrhages cash just to stay operational, and everyone is owned by stockholders who are only interested in profit. If you're not expanding, you're losing - and if you lose more than a few times, you're done.
(and if you're not constantly on top of things, you'll be eaten alive by the pseudo-third-world, undisputed master of Cheap Plastic Crap(tm))
It's ultimately consumers who are to blame. Almost all of us would rather buy low-quality mass-produced items instead of a higher quality product that costs 10% more. We'd rather go for the comfort of eating at a major chain instead of a one-location restaurant (which usually costs about the same). We'll howl about trade deficits, but end up almost exclusively buying foreign-made products. We'll lament the effect of crushing steamroller BigBox stores, but don't even notice the smaller shops we drive by on the way there.
I'm as guilty as anyone else here, and you know that there's an extremely high probability that you are too - useless token gestures aside.
Illegal immigration has typically only been an issue whenever we start imposing heavy limits - during periods when we get testy or concerned about numbers. The only reason I support those limitations (when they're reasonable) is that we want a steady influx, not a massive wave all at once. A constant flow allows for easier integration, where waves result in ghettos and long-running separation (which is the very thing we do NOT want out of immigrants)).
Also, a great many immigrants of past periods were very illegal. They were supposed to check in "off the boat", and only land in certain ports, but many went ashore without doing so (since it was also common to be turned back, depending on the year). The record keeping was pretty bad back then, and I have more than a few trans-Atlantic "wetbacks" in my family history.
Ellis Island was a primary port of entry for a while, but it was also known for being an unpleasant way into the country - and an easy one to bypass. The total number of immigrants arriving always far exceeded the numbers that were actually processed - because they simply snuck in. This made easy deportation one of the easiest ways for police to deal with minor troublemakers.
Some things never change.
I know racism been defined as an unword by the PC-right, but that's not going to stop me from identifying it when I see it. If you don't see the obvious racism in the GP post, then you are also a racist, and I don't expect to have a meaningful conversation with you.
We live in a wonderful world when we have to resort to calling "irritation directed at an ethnic group" racism. I remember when "racist" was a much stronger word.
I don't particularly agree with his post - it doesn't help that I have a number of friends who would be deported if the government noticed them - but I can't find any factual error with anything he said, because I've seen it first-hand.
I'm inclined to want this country to stay a "beacon of liberty". I don't want to view immigrants as a threat to my job and way of life - I view them as raw material, much like my own (Irish) immigrant ancestors who went through the exact same things.
However, simply labeling someone racist isn't an argument. For that matter, I don't believe he is a "racist" - that's abusing a buzzword, and betrays it's full meaning. He would be better labeled as a xenophobe - it's not the hispanic race or the indian race he's railing against, it's the fact that they are from another country, another culture. That's not racism. Saying he is as bad as a true racist is no different from saying a racist is no worse than a radical isolationist.
Of course, he may well be an actual racist - he was a bit vehement. The post itself, though, wasn't racist. That's just a cheap way of discarding what he said. Here's a better response.
* Where did your folks come from? How did they get to this country (as you can bet it wasn't the Mayflower)? How did they make a living?
The answer most people will give is the best way to deal with immigrant fears - since the vast majority of us are ourselves of immigrant origin.
Let them come, like they always have. The culture of the US, for better or for worse, is immigrant to it's core - and ALWAYS has been.
Makes it hard to say who's idea is better. :)
On the one hand, you can largely form your own opinion - but you can't question the validity of the source documentation.
On the other hand, you can explore the truth, but only as long as you do not deviate from doctrine.
I am not sure what kind of source you want me to cite ? What claims do you dispute ? On most of these subjects, I found wikipedia citation sources (they are very complete on theological subjects) to be quite well-founded.
I think his response came from a minor cultural difference. In the US (where I'm assuming the grandfather post came from), Southern Baptists are among the most stringent of the "sane" varieties of fundamentalist (though it's always hard to equate religious fervor with insanity). They believe, at least on the surface, in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, and make it the primary focus of their beliefs, to the point of near-idolatry. That is purely an opinionated statement on my part, and I assure you it's members would disagree vehemently. :)
This focus is why, at least here, Fundamentalists (as a subset of Protestants) tend to be hostile towards anything that brings factual biblical data into question. It's not that they do not want to know the truth in greater clarity (especially as quite a few of them are very intelligent individuals), but that it brings the basis of their beliefs into question - primarily because their belief is centered on Received Truth rather than on theology itself. Unlike the Catholic Church, fundamentalists are more willing to reinterpret existing beliefs (and you see that, constantly, over the decades), but they are a stickler for details - things must have happened, verbatim, as seen in the Bible - leaving only human interpretation at fault.
You would believe, in these conditions, that the Church would try to find as much information on JC than possible but no, it is now an organism of its own, autonomous about its doctrine. They did not update their beliefs when it became apparent that 3 gospels come from a single source or when Thomas gospel was found.
On the other hand Catholics in the US tend to be less focused on biblical accuracy and more on theology - the nature of God, divine plans, etc. This is a primary reason why the sciences are far more accepted among Catholics than among Protestants here - because one isn't threatened (as their belief revolves around unquestioning faith in a deity itself - the why's, not the how's), while the other is (since their belief is based around the writings about that deity) is forced to accept some things as non-literal (which they do not care much for), or simply in error. Since it's always humans that err, not the Bible (since the Bible is the direct word of God), then the new information must be patently wrong.
Note that this is a blatant generalization, and does not apply to all strict Fundamentalists (and from what I've seen, doesn't apply to a significant portion of them - as long as they don't feel cornered over it).
On the other hand, when it comes to the Catholic Church, remember that while they aren't very involved in searching for the Ark or other evidence that events actually occurred (that's primarily protestant territory), they do expend a lot of money and time on the literary and historical study of biblical material. In movies they always seem eager to quash any new information, but in the real world they don't seem to suppress much - they just discount anything that they think is worthless.
A good example is the Gospel of Thomas. It's been known for a long time - it's not a new discovery. The difference is it's now embraced by popular fiction - which is what brought it back to the public eye. The Church didn't do much to supress or fight it - they just dismissed it as what it very likely is - one of many fascinating but ultimately irrelevant documents written by gnostics. Since it's not already an accepted part of the Bible, fundamentalists didn't even notice. Personally I think it's beautifully written - by people who were of a religion that borrowed from but was not even remotely Christianity. Read up on Gnostics - extremely interesting faith based on mysticism, the power of secret knowledge, and gleeful abuse of logic.
... or more people could do like me and get a motorcycle. Don't know how to ride? I got a bicycle a few weeks back (never rode one before) and started riding it around the neighborhood, then for short errands. Next up I'm taking a rider's training course (suggested for anyone, even if they've ridden before). After that there's just a few minor legalities (license, insurance) and then I get a motorcycle. 50+ mpg, and HOV lane all the way. :)
Down side is that, being a newly minted rider, I'd do best to work my way up to a full commute (I live in the suburbs - where there's next to no bus service or mass transit, and everything is a bit of a drive).
The more extensive your vocabulary, the better you can fine-tune communication. Words are tools. A simple screwdriver is good for most jobs, but you often find yourself using different screwdrivers for different tasks. Sometimes you want a jewelers screwdriver to work on your glasses. Other times you want a large flathead with a strong grip so you can apply torque. A band saw is just as much a tool as a drill, and serves very different purposes - it all depends on your need.
Sometimes, though, the job can only be done with a good solid sledgehammer.
Swear words are effectively sledgehammers.
For example, it is often required that you express distaste or anger - they're everyday emotions that you can't hide from, and they often need to be declared. You have a wide variety of words to use. Simple direct "base" words, like "Angry" or "Mad" get the basic point across but are far too generic to have any real meaning beyond the basic concept. Being basic words, though, they have more emotional impact. There are better words in the core vocabulary, such as "Furious" or "Irritated" - these allow finer grades of meaning, but trade this for a bit of power. As you go up the ladder, you can achieve more and more precise meanings, such as "irascible", "choleric", or "perturbed". In civil communications, these can describe your feelings to a great level of precision. They also lose almost all of their emotional power.
Say you've done something to anger me, in a situation where it's appropriate for me to express that anger. Not only that, but you're threatening me - in many circumstances counter-intimidation is the only intelligent response (since an appeal will often simply fail, and a first-strike is usually not acceptable).
There are three basic routes you could follow.
Do as many well-educated verbose geeks will do, and respond with a well-spoken and wordy response that applies logic and fine shades of meaning to each and every word. In an emotional situation, this is generally useless and shows intelligence but very little understanding of real-world social interaction.
You can apply your vocabulary, abstaining from actual cursing, but choosing your words for effect. Phrases like "choking on your own blood" or "cripple you for life" keep the wording short and simple, and don't require degrading language. The problem is it's very difficult for most intelligent people to intimidate intelligently without being overtly threatening yourself. This is usually the best course, but it's also the most risky.
Alternately, a simple "Fuck you", or "back off asshole" will usually work much better. While cussing can fan the flames, once the individuals are already angry then a little cussing really doesn't add much to it. Quite the opposite - degenerating into schoolhouse taunts does a very good job of releasing tension (which is almost always what most fights are about) without actually hitting eachother.
Vocalization is a mammal concept (at least the way we use it). Speech is a purely human concept. Cussing, though, is most definitely a primate concept - chimps taught sign language invent their own forms very quickly. When you cuss, you tap into primal emotions, for better or for worse. Almost every association you have for any swear word is animal in nature.
That's why swearing is unacceptable. It has nothing to do with polite society, or problem resolution. It's for the same reason why nakedness offends (because a naked human body loses it's veneer of civilization - naked humans look like any other animal). For the same reason why many cultures dislike extensive facial hair or long scalp hair (it's a reminder that we're still just animals). It's why virtually all of our basic laws - both religious and civil - primarily focus on covering up for t
Let's see:
We have mastered the atom, we can grow food in what used to be inhospitable deserts, we can cure (and barely notice) the vast majority of lethal diseases, we can make premature infants live - and the elderly live longer. We can cross the globe in hours, go to the moon, and hurl probes beyond the solar system. We can rebuild even the most gruesome injuries (if we can reach the injured quickly enough), we virtually all own computers that make the giant machines of our parents look like calculators, literacy is at an all-time high, and we can give our pets medical care that our grandparents couldn't imagine. Every day, we are bombarded by more products of human imagination than were possible in a year a few generations back. Every single area of the arts now enjoys patronage and levels of activity unimaginable during the last renaissance, and for all of the inevitable garbage there are works that are without a doubt among the finest our species has ever produced. We live longer, do more, and through the wonders of technology, lead richer, fuller, lives.
We are in that renaissance now - at least, we are in relative comparison to the previous one.
But trust me, understanding a bit more about the human genome won't really make our lives that much better, because technology and science bring incremental improvements, but never societal epiphany.
Consider: Thanks to the wonders of technology, most of the population is now literate... but the common reading level is frighteningly low - 6th grade level, last I heard. The standard vocabulary has many technical terms, but fewer fine shades of meaning. While it's true that the vast majority can now read, that's all they can do. Shakespeare was directed at a post-medieval common population with limited literacy (due to lack of books) but with the capacity to see the subtext - but today most of the population can no longer read between the lines (even when translated into modern English) - and has to have it grossly spelled out for them in a visual format (with most of the content lost).
Consider: Medical science has developed by leaps and bounds, we can cure almost every disease we know, and are now focused on those that are of far less importance. We even have the luxury of bemoaning the (historically, in ratio to the population) minor deaths caused by AIDS, Cancer, and other incurables, because death by disease is no longer the hard every-day reality it once was for most people - most of us have to watch the news for that. We eat better, and are individually more healthy. But... our lifespan has only improved slightly, we now die of old but previously-uncommon causes, and a significant portion of the population lives with problems that we can sustain indefinitely (often in torment), but not fix. We revel in how young the middle aged appear today, but ignore the fact that they will still live, if accidents and disease don't kill them, about as long as their grandparents did - and little more. And accidents - brutal, meat-mangling, horrific accidents - are now more likely to kill them than ever before.
Consider: We live in a land of plenty. There is more food, and better distribution of that food, than has ever existed - globally. There are farms in the middle of deserts, breeds of corn, wheat, and other plants far superior to those of previous centuries, and better knowledge of nutrition. Those who live in breadbaskets are doing very well - if they choose. Yet large areas of the world are now constantly on the edge of starvation - because all those medical advances have made our population explode, and because our technology now allows small and ill-equipped groups of individuals to devastate entire regions, destabilize entire cultures, and throw m
When you're deciding on who gets human rights, and who doesn't, you have to err on the side of caution.
For example, assuming wild swings in opinion over time (as tends to happen), would you be more concerned about chimpanzees being granted full human rights (something I consider overly drastic), or about the severely retarded (and I mean severely - minimally functional vs a funny-looking slow guy who can't make it on his own) having their rights downgraded due to missing critical elements of a human mind?
I'm not personally concerned about the fate of an embryo - it's not quite a "baby" yet. I AM concerned about the precedents set by it's fate, and the inevitable results of applying too much logic to the value of human life. Your life only has as much value as society gives it, and the only safe standards have to be overly accepting - otherwise you see how quickly they can erode.
Another issue... are these embryo's property? If some experimenter chose not to terminate, and had the technology to keep it going, at what point would they cross a line? Definitely not sentience, as it would be very easy to prevent a developing human from ever having that level of intelligence. Would YOU like to see a number of purposefully brain damaged homo sapiens vat grown for medical experimentation?
Sad thing is, I'm pretty certain that's the future. When opportunity meets ethics, ethics never wins (given time).
Most people will gauge behavioral norms based on what they see others doing - peer emulation. If a large percentage of their peers are known to engage in a specific interest or activity, it's socially acceptable - no matter what it is, in any society. Bandwagon effect. Instead of assuming that anything unusual or rarely seen is specifically abnormal, the average person will base abnormality on what a small (but identifiable) segment of their peers enjoy but do not share with the majority. Anything else that can't be tied to a social group of any kind is not readily classifiable and thus can't be easily stereotyped.
When computers were a rarity, and those versed in them even more so, the public had no clear stereotype for geeks (at least the computational variety). As their numbers increased in everyday life, an identifiable patterns emerged - and their segment of the population eventually became large enough to transition from a socially unclassified group - to a full blown stereotype. They were assigned a social caste.
When a minority are able to understand a thing that the minority cannot, they are viewed as separate. Reactions to them will usually be some form of awe or mystification (geeks definitely got that treatment), or social marginalization (since at that point there are differences for the majority to persecute). That awe and persecution of any minority group not in power is an old story, and one that everyone experiences growing up (social minority kids getting together more out of mutual exclusion than shared interests, and the popular kids living in mortal fear of the very real threat that any perceived abnormality would destroy their social standing).
The fact that it's no longer uncool to show skill in computers is due, more than anything else, to the fact that most of the population is now exposed to them, and share at least some skill.
Being an idiot will only be acceptable for as long as it's shared by any particular peer group. Reality TV, for example, makes things worse - not by making people more stupid, but by making them feel that stupidity is normal, and that any attempt to change threatens to remove the safety blanket of normalcy.
Unless we begin testing every individual, and terminating anyone below a required intellectual ability, that will never end. Since we can't do that without demolishing every the underpinnings of freedom (ie the basic right to your own life as you want it), we'll just have to live with the fact that the majority will always be of average intelligence - and "idiocy" will always be judged based on what average intelligence is at any given time.
Also, if you think geeks are immune to majority-driven peer pressure, why don't you fire up some Cindy Lauper on your speakers (in the office), and see how long you can take the non-existant pressure.
I agree in principle, and to a great extent this country's legal language is purposefully more accessible than what you see in many other industrialized nations. However...
The example statement you gave implies that it is wrong for me to come over to a friend's home, at their invitation. It also makes the job of a plumber, cable repairman, or even a cop serving a proper warrant, a criminal. It's too vague, and says nothing about what circumstances it's meant to apply to. Common sense would suggest that some things are ok, but in that case why even write it down at all? It also means that someone arguing against it has no information on it's intent or the logic that drove it.
Most laws, at least the well-written ones, try to be as specific as possible. For instance, you should add the qualifier "without the consent of the owner". That allows for cases of permission. But then you have to clarify "consent". A written and signed document is extreme, and would make for hardship. Spoken consent is the norm, though at some point (either as an additional clarification, or something in another law that can be drawn as a reference) the definition of "consent" has to be laid out - or the a burglar's attorney would have an easy time finding a loophole. Also, who is the owner? If a husband's name is on the house, does that mean his wife can't invite anyone inside? What about his children (inviting either another child or an adult). What if the house is rented? That might suggest that you can't bring company over without consent from the actual property owner.
There are common sense answers, but laws don't work well if they rely on common sense for anything except unlikely or simply unforeseen situations.
Then there's the matter of "wrong". Yes, it's wrong, under many circumstances, to enter another man's house. That makes a burglar bad. Very bad. Did they commit a crime? What about a friend who spreads lies about you in order to undermine your social standing? That's wrong too, and there are laws regarding slander and libel, but it's not a criminal act. What if another friend is told an important, harmless, but not legally protected, secret - and disseminates that information immediately afterwards? That's just plain wrong - but no law will ever cover it, and good luck getting a court to involve itself.
Communications with an outside non-legal party should be written in as plain English as possible, but this requires far more care and skill than a standard legal document, as anything said can be held as binding in court - meaning every single ambiguity can be turned against it's intent. On the other hand, ambiguity takes even more skill to hide in a standard legal text (much like sophistry took more skill in Latin and Greek due to the structure of those languages).
Luckily judges usually have the authority to call bullshit when ambiguity is obviously abused. They don't always use it, but then again, judicial skill varies as well.
They won quite a few. It's that very success that woke people up to the reality of what this group was doing.
On a side note, my wife took a look at the ruling I was reading and asked how I could understand any of that. My reply that judicial rulings are usually a far easier read than affidavits and motions got me thinking...
Has anyone else noticed, on their end, that actually reading through court documents on the web has given them a firmer grasp of legal terms and syntax than they had before? For instance, I still only have a layman's understanding of law, but what used to look like meaningless legal mumbo-jumbo is starting to look more and more like verbose (but logical) legal whitepapers and RFC's.
Well, -usually- logical. (*cough*SCO*cough)
br. Either way, do you think that the increasing availability of court papers results in at least some increase in legal literacy?
While I can easily see (as a layman) how an increase in temperatures could destabilize things enough to result in some drops, I have never seen the increasing ferocity of winter tied well to global warming - except from sources I wouldn't put any faith in. I also don't remember ever hearing that kind of idea bounced around in the mainstream until it after The Day After Tomorrow came out - which makes me extra skeptical (sort of like how bad Dinosaur science started showing up in the news after Jurassic Park came out).
As for extinction-level events... we're in one now. The spread of humans across the globe resulted in the (geologically instant) extinction of almost all large mammals across the face of the planet - leaving mosly the African species (which evolved to deal with predatory monkeys), bears (too badass for our ancestors), and mass-herd animals like buffalo (and most of those went as well). This was all before history even began. We're wiping out species so fast that it hurts to even think about it. We're very nearly finished with our closest relatives as it is. It's not a modern problem - though population growth and pollution are the main causes now (and pollution is less of a danger than we thought - go get your hair tested for mercury levels. According to 1950's medical knowledge, most of us shouldn't even be alive at this point).
Oh, it's a distinct possibility. However, it requires two things:
* All solid models of global warming require a considerable amount of time, as the insulating effect of greenhouse gases is very small, and operate on a timescale of centuries. It's possible we were wrong, and if the temperature truly leaps, that becomes more likely.
* It also requires an actual warming trend, rather than the patchwork we see now. We see glaciers melting, as well as polar icecaps. We also see cooling trends in some of the hottest places on earth. We're seeing record high temperatures all over the world, but also record lows.
Logically, this suggests not warming, but instability. Did people think we lived in a magic time when the world we knew would remain the same forever - even though history shows that there is no "norm"? This can also be caused by human causes, and I assure you within the next hundred years that will be reality, but I'm honestly more afraid of the unusual tectonics and solar activity we started seeing at right around the same time than I am about CO2.
Also, one additional bit of info. Please feel free to verify. CO2 has increased by 31% since the start of the industrial revolution - and is projected to require far higher amounts to have any appreciable effect. Methane has a far higher GWP than CO2, meaning it's more damaging greenhouse-wise. It has increased by 150% - primarily due to agriculture (both plant growth and livestock). You don't hear much about methane because it serves no political motives to fight it.
In other words, while fossil fuels are a major factor in greenhouse gas emissions, it plays a very small role compared to the agricultural requirements of supporting 6+ billion people. That doesn't make for great news, though. In the short run, anyway. In the long run, CO2 has more lasting effects than any of the other GG's - so don't worry, Big Oil will be properly blameable for the next few centuries.
Again, please verify, then go watch An Inconvenient Truth, analyze it's logic (or lack thereof) and then go compare it to REAL ecology like Silent Spring (which has scared the living hell out of people for decades, and backed up it's assertions with verifiable evidence).
The most common argument against any questioning of global warming is to claim that the questioner is somehow not intelligent enough to understand. It's second only to immediately accusing any questions of being paid for by Big Oil.
Disregarding GM-Hath-Come theories as preposterous isn't a wise move, but blind acceptance of what the media tells you to believe, in the absence of hard evidence (such as an impossible-to-hide global warming trend that can actually withstand scrutiny and debate), is just as foolish. There's plenty of suggestive evidence, but suggestive doesn't cut it when it comes to claims of absolutes.
The changes are suddenly coming very fast, and people want to know why - even though there's some pretty friggin scary things going on right now (such as marked increases in tectonic activity, unexplained changes in solar activity that violate 200 years of observation, and other observable items that have nothing to do with pollution).
(on a side note, while CO2 is the popular (and quite effective) greenhouse gas, it's not the one you have to worry about. Methane is far more effective at the job, and is put out in massive quantities - by agriculture.)
Be careful saying that. You're likely to get yourself harassed, blacklisted, and shunned for such politically incorrect remarks.
I fully believe that the greenhouse effect is a simple matter of physics. I also believe that the effects, as we know them, do not occur rapidly. I also know that, historically, the climate is NOT stable - whoever said that it's been stable for most of history simply does not know history (Nineteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death being one example, the total environmental collapse of mesoamerica and the middle east, the sudden shift that made Europe more habitable and helped lead to the Rennaisance, etc etc etc).
In other words, yes our pollutants will have a very real effect on our climate. There is no free lunch. But, those effects belong to our children and grandchildren - what you see today is the normal cycle of change - but in a highly connected world prone to panic and fantasy, and overly willing to lay blame anywhere it can.
It may not be all bad though... it might scare us into actually controlling ourselves - before the bill actually shows up.
The lack of game development in Houston is one reason why I've never even tried for a game dev job. There is a glut of development job posting around here, but it's virtually all business logic, web design, and medical. Nothing stimulating - just work for (hopefully) decent pay.
.Net programmers (who can switch to Perl, PHP, ASP, VB, C++, x86 Assembly - and can admin a unix or windows box to boot). I don't trust headhunters, and the job sites I look at give wildly varying "standards". Most job postings don't even suggest a figure.
I'm sniffing around at the developer job market lately, but it's hard to get an actual idea of what is a good figure to ask for in terms of salary. My current salary is laughable (especially considering 8 years of heavy and varied experience), but I also work at an ISP/Datacenter (an industry that never pays well).
The hardest part of making the leap to actually start pursuing jobs is... what kind of salary should I ask for? Historically, I've asked for amounts so low that it's ended up a ripoff, but I have absolutely no reliable idea of what people make - especially
Any suggestions on how to identify a reasonable price tag to put on myself?
Why is he abusing drugs? Absent draconian drug prohibition laws, heroin would be cheap. The alleged crime that is associated with heroin usage is largely the fault of the current drug laws. What damage is he doing to his body? Go ahead, do the research. I'll wait... Morphine derivates, unlike alcohol and tobacco (both legal) and amphetamines, etc., aren't really damaging to the body. The biggest danger is secondary infections or diseases - hepatitis, AIDS, etc. That danger would be almost entirely eliminated if we abandoned the war on drugs. Another common problem is malnutrition due to the combined effect of the drugs appetite suppression and the cost of the drugs. The third danger - overdose - is largely a product of the underground (and thus variable and unsanitary) distribution system. In other words, make heroin legal so that there's a safe, clean and reliable supply and make sure that the users eat regularly and there is very little harm in heroin use or even addiction.
If the average person could be entrusted to be able to make occasional use of heroin, stay out of public while doped up, and not cause a problem, then I'd see nothing seriously wrong with it.
Since it's become glaringly obvious over the past few decades that the average individual does not have the ability to keep a powerful drug like heroin under control, the nature of the drug changes. Unlike many other common illegal drugs (such as cocaine, marijuana, etc), you don't see many ex-users taking it lightly. While cocaine can be addictive, it doesn't seem to be able to overpower normal adults who show basic intelligence in it's use. I was shocked when I initially saw just how commonplace it was, but I didn't see many people fall to it. I only knew a few who showed anything like a biological tendency towards addiction, and they usually learned their lesson early on. I don't know a single pothead who I would say is truly addicted to pot - at worst, it becomes a crutch, and usually it's dropped as soon as the user has a serious desire to do so.
Even crack, the ultimate boogeyman of drugs, is exaggerated. It's powerfully addictive, but without regular use the addictive properties are easily dismissed (much like meth, which is primarily addictive once you turn it into an energy boost instead of just fun - the exact same mistake I saw every single time).
Heroin, on the other hand, is notorious. This isn't just due to the media milking it (and lately they're not - crack and meth are so much more dramatic) or the government spreading lies. Heroin is the only major drug I have ever seen where you can fully expect to be warned off of it by those actively using it. It's not a one-shot-and-you're-hooked drug (the favorite exaggeration of the past few administrations), but it's still not far from the truth. Unlike almost every other drug that relies on an endorphin boost for kicks, opiates are the primary class that specialize almost entirely in an endorphin rush - one far more powerful than that produced by any other street drug. Including crack.
Here's what it all comes down to. Any drug that toys with endorphin release is very dangerous - even when handed out by a doctor. Anything that provides a powerful release quickly exceeds the ability of normal human beings to turn it down. There are controlled heroin users out there, but the vast majority do not stay that way very long.
Personally, I've never touched the stuff. I touched just about everything else a while back, though, and I've definitely "walked the streets of Babylon" with a number of close friends - a frightening number of which are no longer alive. I somehow managed to avoid serious trouble, and came out the other side with a fairly laid-back attitude towards most street drugs. Most.
Heroin is a substance that has no good reason to exist, at present. It was designed for medical use, but proved too dangerous for doctors to harness. It hits a mammal where they're weakest - and humans are no
No... most regrettably, Insurrection has long-since beaten Final Frontier in the Worst Trek Movie Ever competition.
The difference between the two, on my end, is that I've watched FF at least once since buying it. I have started Insurrection twice, but never got more than 30 minutes into it. It was that bad.
Please note that the only reason I own either one is that I had two gaping holes in my Trek collection that had to be filled, regardless of how dirty I felt when I bought them.
Final Frontier proved that Shatner can't direct as well as Nimoy. Insurrection proved that, while Shatner deserved a beating for his mistake, someone else deserved a firing squad.