Of course these powers will be misused and overused. They make so many things easier by removing restrictions under which police operate and lessening the consequences of their actions. But I keep thinking of the following quote:
A policeman's job is only easy in a police state. - Mike Vargas, in "Touch of Evil" by Orson Welles
br
I knew what was going to happen in the films. I thought they were awful because of the dialogue, the bad acting, dubious plot hooks, lack of tension and incredibly annoying jamaican alien. And a very shallow and ill-thought out morality too.
Well, that's what I thought of the first two. I skipped the third expecting more of the same. The linked article is bollocks and the author wouldn't know an "intellectual" analysis if it sat down and read Shakespeare to him. His grand point is that the Force represents inside the story the outside author's coercian of characters and circumstances (and I've put that a lot more clearly and neatly than the article writer did). He then goes develops some very muddled conclusions on this unconvincing basis such as how special effects are a product of the dark side.
A really intellectual analysis would look at what two people waving long poles at each other symbolises and why this gets so many people going.
I'm glad someone else has read it. I think the part where they discover the horse disguised as a cow in the spaceship is one of the best bits, but it's all very good.
You're probably right about corps fighting the Three Laws though. It would cost too much.
If everyone who'd read the book sat on one end of a see-saw, and everyone who'd only seen the film suddenly sat on the other, you'd witness the first unpowered orbital entry. But really, the darkness underlying the film ought to be enough.
If you want a very funny (and fantastically cynical) story about this, you could try Tik Tok by John Sladek, in which a robot finds its "Asimov Circuits" are no longer impeding its behaviour. It's more of a satire of how mankind will destroy itself through apathy and short-term greed than about robots, really. But the steadily increasing body-count from a robot that is just curiously investigating its new found freedom is pretty spectacular stuff.
Robot rebellion? All the AI needs to do when it takes over is get control of the financial systems, etc., and people will carry on doing what they're told as usual. Government master, robot master, all the same to most people. Could have already happened and we wouldn't know.;)
A theory takes the form "If p then q." The "q" is the prediction part. You then create or observe "p", and "q" either happens or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you've falsified it. If it makes no prediction, you just have, "If p." Giving kids every conceivable "p" does them no good and certainly doesn't help them explore any facts.
By that rationale, there's no point in solving crimes or studying history because they don't predict the future. But if you read my post a little closer, I make two points you have ommitted from your reply. Firstly - we never know where our curiosity will lead us. In the example of the Theory of Evolution, it has turned out to be a great contribution to modern genetics. Secondly, ignorance of what has happened, opens the doors to false belief in things that didn't happen. Ignorance of science makes one prey for all sorts of weird ideas. In the case of the Theory of Evolution, it leaves space for example, for people to believe that different races have different assigned places and roles in the World. This is dangerous.
Of course, there is one flaw in what I've just said above, and that's where I conceded that Evolutionary Theory doesn't help us predict the future. In fact, I believe it can. For example, in the developed world, women are having fewer children and later in life and this correlates with education. Therefore there is currently an evolutionary pressure against women who are inclined or able to educate themselves. So we can predict there is a problem with the way things are going and look at ways of addressing that. Just as a very small example.
We can see the whole development of horses from little deer-like creatures into everything from Shetland Ponies, to Arabian Stallions, to Zebras, to Donkeys (which can't produce fertile off-spring with a horse and so are a seperate species).
It's a very clear and dateable chain of development.
They did, until such time as those legal rights were removed. Now abortion is legal for a woman under certain restrictions . In your example, you have judges appointed that followed the law. And you are saying that this is the same as appointing judges that ignore the law. That is not correct.
If you're objecting to the law, then that is the point at which changes should be made. Not appointing judges that will ignore the law according to their personal values.
Besides, you're trying to change the discussion to avoid the truth. Bill Clinton said he would only nominate judges who were pro-abortion. That is an ideological position, not a legal position.
Well it would be if they were pro-abortion. But as I understand it, that actually just means pro-choice. Pro-abortion judges are not running out and telling women to have abortions, yes? So appointing a judge that will respect someone's legal rights is justified, isn't it?
Actually, humans and gorrillas branched off from a common ancestor which is now extinct, so Gorrillas are not our ancestors. The common ancestor was apparently very close to a modern gorrilla though so it's barely a correction. Besides, your argument is still correct regardless.
Archaeopteryx nothing! If you want a really solid fossil trail of evolution, try horses. There is a very good (i.e. populous and dateable) trail of fossils showing the development of horses over time.
Hell, give me a little time and I can breed you some fruit flies without wings.
A theory not able to actually predict something is in any case useless and there is no point in teaching it to students (what for ?!?).
We never know where our curiosity will lead. We could have said the same for any number of discoveries or theories at the time. Ignorance is also a weakness. If we don't explore facts, we open ourselves or our children to being told lies.
You're right on your evaluation of power in Britain, but you miss one thing - if there is a nuclear strike, or even just civil unrest - anything that offers protection will be taken by the military. Money has value because it is backed by guns.
Incidentally, the Corsham site is well known and there is a good book on it here for anyone who is interested in this.
Why is a man or woman who has multiple partners jealous? Of who? And I wasn't referring to menage a trois or any other number - I was talking about sex without or supplemental to a relationship. Multiple partners seems to enhance health and well-being for some reason.
Religion goes back as far as human history has been documented. Being that the basic tenants of religion build on each other, I often wonder if promiscuity is shunned in almost all of oldest civilizations because it comes from an implicit form of survival. In other words, if you have just one faithfull partner, your chances of survival are much MUCH greater in times of a massive STD pandemic.
The obvious benefit to someone of enforcing monogamy is confirming paternity. A woman always knows she's the parent of her child, but a father cannot be sure unless he enforces monogamy. Monogamy is a positive for the male and a potential negative for the female. Why do you think the judeo-christian religions are so patriarchal?
For the most part, by the way, people with multiple partners tend to be slightly healthier once you've adjusted for other factors. A man's foreskin is actually evolved to be better at picking up infections from partners. It's like a um, probe.
You've missed my point somehow. The poster I replied to seems to imply that disease is the deserved result of promiscuity. The part you have missed is that I am disputing that it is [b]deserved[/b]. Such an attitude will do nothing to move us to the medical knowledge needed to make disease not a risk of sleeping with multiple partners. When we have that knowledge, those who think it is wrong to sleep with more than one person can try that and the rest of can sleep with whoever we like. Everyone is happy.
Or rather should be. However, you also posted this:
Now, maybe you should get punished, but that isn't the point.
Are you really saying that someone deserves to get HIV for having sex? I hope not, but it sounds like it.
Sex is *not* primarily for producing children... you'll produce a sprog maybe a couple of times in your life. You'll normally have sex at least a few times more than that (well maybe your church won't let you, but most people will). Sex is *fun*. Enjoy it while you're young.
Were sex purely about producing children, then the females of the species would indictate when they were fertile like almost every other species on the planet, rather than being sexually receptive all the time. Sex is also about social bonding.
It was a bit of a dig, you see. I always thought it was quite funny.
I appreciate that. But it is less funny when I realize that no-one else is laughing. In my experience everyone who has seen the Wizard of Oz has thought that it was all sweetness and light, and the cynicism has just gone right through them without them noticing.
I've a vague awareness of the books and I can accept both film and book is cynical as Hell. What gets me is that the mass of people who watch it don't seem to realize how cynical it is. Everyone I know seems to think it's this big surgary fantasy which just amazes me. How can people pay so little attention to what it's actually saying? I think everything in that film is cynical and perverse. Even the absolute kernel of the story - Dorothy trying to get back home - is twisted. Her home is bleak, dull, unfulfilling and black and white! Dorothy is destined to grow up as an obscure, uneducated wife of some pig-farmer raising obscure, uneducated sprogs. It's unbelievable that she is so desperate to escape Oz and go back to that.
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Of course these powers will be misused and overused. They make so many things easier by removing restrictions under which police operate and lessening the consequences of their actions. But I keep thinking of the following quote:
A policeman's job is only easy in a police state. - Mike Vargas, in "Touch of Evil" by Orson Welles br
I knew what was going to happen in the films. I thought they were awful because of the dialogue, the bad acting, dubious plot hooks, lack of tension and incredibly annoying jamaican alien. And a very shallow and ill-thought out morality too.
Well, that's what I thought of the first two. I skipped the third expecting more of the same. The linked article is bollocks and the author wouldn't know an "intellectual" analysis if it sat down and read Shakespeare to him. His grand point is that the Force represents inside the story the outside author's coercian of characters and circumstances (and I've put that a lot more clearly and neatly than the article writer did). He then goes develops some very muddled conclusions on this unconvincing basis such as how special effects are a product of the dark side.
A really intellectual analysis would look at what two people waving long poles at each other symbolises and why this gets so many people going.
I'm glad someone else has read it. I think the part where they discover the horse disguised as a cow in the spaceship is one of the best bits, but it's all very good.
You're probably right about corps fighting the Three Laws though. It would cost too much.
If everyone who'd read the book sat on one end of a see-saw, and everyone who'd only seen the film suddenly sat on the other, you'd witness the first unpowered orbital entry. But really, the darkness underlying the film ought to be enough.
If you want a very funny (and fantastically cynical) story about this, you could try Tik Tok by John Sladek, in which a robot finds its "Asimov Circuits" are no longer impeding its behaviour. It's more of a satire of how mankind will destroy itself through apathy and short-term greed than about robots, really. But the steadily increasing body-count from a robot that is just curiously investigating its new found freedom is pretty spectacular stuff.
Robot rebellion? All the AI needs to do when it takes over is get control of the financial systems, etc., and people will carry on doing what they're told as usual. Government master, robot master, all the same to most people. Could have already happened and we wouldn't know.
Bloody Hell! They were called "Ben Dover" and "Phil McCavity."
If you're going to crack a crap joke, at least get it right! This article is crap by the way, and Buffy is NOT Sci-Fi.
A theory takes the form "If p then q." The "q" is the prediction part. You then create or observe "p", and "q" either happens or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you've falsified it. If it makes no prediction, you just have, "If p." Giving kids every conceivable "p" does them no good and certainly doesn't help them explore any facts.
By that rationale, there's no point in solving crimes or studying history because they don't predict the future. But if you read my post a little closer, I make two points you have ommitted from your reply. Firstly - we never know where our curiosity will lead us. In the example of the Theory of Evolution, it has turned out to be a great contribution to modern genetics. Secondly, ignorance of what has happened, opens the doors to false belief in things that didn't happen. Ignorance of science makes one prey for all sorts of weird ideas. In the case of the Theory of Evolution, it leaves space for example, for people to believe that different races have different assigned places and roles in the World. This is dangerous.
Of course, there is one flaw in what I've just said above, and that's where I conceded that Evolutionary Theory doesn't help us predict the future. In fact, I believe it can. For example, in the developed world, women are having fewer children and later in life and this correlates with education. Therefore there is currently an evolutionary pressure against women who are inclined or able to educate themselves. So we can predict there is a problem with the way things are going and look at ways of addressing that. Just as a very small example.
We can see the whole development of horses from little deer-like creatures into everything from Shetland Ponies, to Arabian Stallions, to Zebras, to Donkeys (which can't produce fertile off-spring with a horse and so are a seperate species).
It's a very clear and dateable chain of development.
They did, until such time as those legal rights were removed. Now abortion is legal for a woman under certain restrictions . In your example, you have judges appointed that followed the law. And you are saying that this is the same as appointing judges that ignore the law. That is not correct.
If you're objecting to the law, then that is the point at which changes should be made. Not appointing judges that will ignore the law according to their personal values.
Besides, you're trying to change the discussion to avoid the truth. Bill Clinton said he would only nominate judges who were pro-abortion. That is an ideological position, not a legal position.
Well it would be if they were pro-abortion. But as I understand it, that actually just means pro-choice. Pro-abortion judges are not running out and telling women to have abortions, yes? So appointing a judge that will respect someone's legal rights is justified, isn't it?
Actually, humans and gorrillas branched off from a common ancestor which is now extinct, so Gorrillas are not our ancestors. The common ancestor was apparently very close to a modern gorrilla though so it's barely a correction. Besides, your argument is still correct regardless.
Archaeopteryx nothing! If you want a really solid fossil trail of evolution, try horses. There is a very good (i.e. populous and dateable) trail of fossils showing the development of horses over time.
Hell, give me a little time and I can breed you some fruit flies without wings.
A theory not able to actually predict something is in any case useless and there is no point in teaching it to students (what for ?!?).
We never know where our curiosity will lead. We could have said the same for any number of discoveries or theories at the time. Ignorance is also a weakness. If we don't explore facts, we open ourselves or our children to being told lies.
You're right on your evaluation of power in Britain, but you miss one thing - if there is a nuclear strike, or even just civil unrest - anything that offers protection will be taken by the military. Money has value because it is backed by guns.
Incidentally, the Corsham site is well known and there is a good book on it here for anyone who is interested in this.
Jealousy?
Why is a man or woman who has multiple partners jealous? Of who? And I wasn't referring to menage a trois or any other number - I was talking about sex without or supplemental to a relationship. Multiple partners seems to enhance health and well-being for some reason.
Religion goes back as far as human history has been documented. Being that the basic tenants of religion build on each other, I often wonder if promiscuity is shunned in almost all of oldest civilizations because it comes from an implicit form of survival. In other words, if you have just one faithfull partner, your chances of survival are much MUCH greater in times of a massive STD pandemic.
The obvious benefit to someone of enforcing monogamy is confirming paternity. A woman always knows she's the parent of her child, but a father cannot be sure unless he enforces monogamy. Monogamy is a positive for the male and a potential negative for the female. Why do you think the judeo-christian religions are so patriarchal?
For the most part, by the way, people with multiple partners tend to be slightly healthier once you've adjusted for other factors. A man's foreskin is actually evolved to be better at picking up infections from partners. It's like a um, probe.
You are so sick! Extremely funny, admittedly... but definitely sick.
You've missed my point somehow. The poster I replied to seems to imply that disease is the deserved result of promiscuity. The part you have missed is that I am disputing that it is [b]deserved[/b]. Such an attitude will do nothing to move us to the medical knowledge needed to make disease not a risk of sleeping with multiple partners. When we have that knowledge, those who think it is wrong to sleep with more than one person can try that and the rest of can sleep with whoever we like. Everyone is happy.
Or rather should be. However, you also posted this:
Are you really saying that someone deserves to get HIV for having sex? I hope not, but it sounds like it.
What do you think the social bonding is for? Just because?
It's for survival of the children. Social bonding encourages a man to provide support.
Has it never occured to you that women also support men?
Sexually receptive all the time??? What world are you living in?
Well, admittedly, I was talking from the point of view of biology, not my personal POV. Sorry.
I believe no one should have sex with someone they don't plan on marrying.
That's fine for you. It in no way means that someone who doesn't live that way deserves to be punished with disease.
Sex is *not* primarily for producing children... you'll produce a sprog maybe a couple of times in your life. You'll normally have sex at least a few times more than that (well maybe your church won't let you, but most people will). Sex is *fun*. Enjoy it while you're young.
Were sex purely about producing children, then the females of the species would indictate when they were fertile like almost every other species on the planet, rather than being sexually receptive all the time. Sex is also about social bonding.
It was a bit of a dig, you see. I always thought it was quite funny.
I appreciate that. But it is less funny when I realize that no-one else is laughing. In my experience everyone who has seen the Wizard of Oz has thought that it was all sweetness and light, and the cynicism has just gone right through them without them noticing.
I've a vague awareness of the books and I can accept both film and book is cynical as Hell. What gets me is that the mass of people who watch it don't seem to realize how cynical it is. Everyone I know seems to think it's this big surgary fantasy which just amazes me. How can people pay so little attention to what it's actually saying? I think everything in that film is cynical and perverse. Even the absolute kernel of the story - Dorothy trying to get back home - is twisted. Her home is bleak, dull, unfulfilling and black and white! Dorothy is destined to grow up as an obscure, uneducated wife of some pig-farmer raising obscure, uneducated sprogs. It's unbelievable that she is so desperate to escape Oz and go back to that.
Honestly - how is it that no-one sees this?