It's more like when you reach 40, your life clock (that crystal on your palm) turns from red to black and you're on Lastday.
Ahhhh, but you're talking "Logan's Fun (with Jessica)" - the TV show.
Taking it from the book, the life cycle was in 7 year increments - first 7 years in creche/school, next 7 years having fun, final 7 years being productive, etc until your life clock ticks to black at 21.
Guess it was easier to change it to a longer cycle and get older actors in the movie/tv show:)
This reminds me of a classic Stan Freberg skit - one of the "Herman Horne does Hi Fi" - where he lampoons Hi Fi hobbyists of the 50's - he's just described a full on sound system, but without speakers:
Interviewer: But what about the speakers?
Horne: The whole house becomes a speaker, you move into the garage!
(snip a few lines)
Horne: As you and your wife sit of an evening, shivering in your garage....
Brilliant stuff - if you've never heard Freberg's "Herman Horne" skits, you absolutely HAVE to get them - it fits so well with modern hobyists/geeks/obsessive types:
Horne: They can sit there and watch their husband suffer with old equipment that has been obsolete for at least a week!:)
Damn, where's the problem - just populate the ship with a collection of "swinger" couples - they'll bonk their partners AND the others no problem.
Thus, everyone's getting it, there's none of that monogomous bullshit to get in the way (when the invetible "I like you're partner, dude!" happens) and so sex is just natural and fun. Wooo hoo.
Of course, getting them to do any science, stay focussed, etc - well - that could be tricky....
Mission Control: "Hey guys, it's time to do the orbital approach manouver.... Hey guys... Awww come on you lot, quit that.... Are we going to have to turn off the jacuzi again????":)
When I was a kid at high school I was helping a guy who'd picked up a Lisa for his office. It wound up at my place while I learned how to set up a DB for him in Omnis. There I was with the biggest "home/office" computer I'd ever seen on a table in our lounge, mucking about with a mouse (woooo - never seen something like that before) and it even had an external HDD (which sat on top, had to be turned on before the computer so it could spool up to speed and sounded like a DC-8 engine-start as it did:)
Had a few of the local geek-kids coming over to inspect it - amazing times:)
Didn't some people use the deck chairs on the titanic as floatation aids after it went down? I seem to recall stories about this and someone mentioned it was used in the recent movie.
Perhaps rearranging isn't so bad if you can later use those same chairs to survive:)
I went to one of this guy's marketing seminars which, while interesting in some areas, turned me off totally when he touched briefly on Internet marketing. He was advocating spamming (this was back in 2000) and saying it was OK.
He also gave out a CD with a couple of mailing lists on it and tools for bulk-sending. He claimed the lists were opt-in but a quick check revealed a few addresses that I knew weren't. Additionally, another company I knew that went tried to use the list to send updates about their products and almost had their link vigilanty'd into non-existance.
If I'd never made the big leaps into the unknown, I wouldn't have moved between two cities within Australia, winding up having a blast in the bigger one I moved to. Then I wouldn't have taken the opportunity to relocate to the USA, having an incredible time in the process. Then I may not have come back to Australia and certainly wouldn't have gone to Argentina, having yet another great time and learning so much about life, etc.
Finally, I'm taking leaps into the Unknown by concentrating more on working with aircraft than with computers.
Sure, I may not have a big house, great car or a cushy position in an office. But I have seen large chunks of the world, met some wonderful people, experienced things well over half the world never will and got some great stories to tell.
My son is only 7 and he's travelled around the world almost three times now (travelling to visit family and friends in various countries) plus he's flown in light aircraft, helicopters and even balloons.
So yeah, I vote *1* for taking the big leap into the Unknown. It's been pretty damned wild so far and I wouldn't have missed it for the world:)
Secondly it was an over-hyped problem that was never really going to affect desktop PC's and the like, which was over-sold to the public and never materialised.
Agreed that it was overhyped, but there were desktop level systems that would have died without work. I saw a number of them during testing and prep during '98/'99:)
The classic was all those xBase systems that used Substr(Dtos([datevale]),3), effectively stripping off the "useless" first 2 digits (apologies if my syntax is incorrect - it's been a while:) One insurance based system calculated premiums and totals completely wrong because it had 2000 values coming before 1996 values when summing a long workers comp claim, etc. As a result, the system refused to write cheques, or wrote cheques too big/small, etc. Rather embarrassing and, given the number of clients hanging off the application (and thus the number of claims processed, cheques produced, etc), leading to a lot of pissed off people in the first few months of 2000:)
Of the work I did on Y2K (including a large Telco, small organisations, a couple of software houses and a public transport service), I'd say about 70% of it was valid. The rest was all being done to dot the i's, cross the t's and keep the lawyers at bay if anything went wrong (eg: "Yes your honour, we did do all that we could to check. It's strange that this one got through but it's not for want of trying, so tell those bastards to naff off and take someone else to court":)
Using just a nitrous oxide charger and a balloon, I was never higher than low Earth orbit.
Try 1,500 litres of medical grade nitrous, a regulator and a stack of balloons. We hit deep space time after time, taking quite a number of pax with us (we weren't called "Tank Sluts" for nothing:)
Combine that with Amyl Nitrate (sp?) and whoops - there goes reality...
Basically, take a big ol' hit of Nitrous and, when the "nang nangs" hit, do a real big hit of Amyl. What happens next is just awesome - the hand of god comes down out of the heavens, opens the top of your head, sticks a finger into your brain and goes like a mix-master/egg-beater.
"The three best things in life are a good landing, a good orgasm, and a good bowel movement. The night carrier landing is one of the few opportunities in life where you get to experience all three at the same time."
People, in general, are not skeptical enough. There is way too much trust (this also applies to politics, religion, etc).
Being a cynical bastard, I see it not as being too much trust but as being too little thought. People don't want freedom of choice, they want freedom from choice. They don't want to have to think about things, they just want their information spooned out to them so they can accept it without thinking.
At the end of the hard day of drudgery at the office, they want to come home, relax and stop having to think about things (or, to be really cynical, continue to not think about things as they have avoided thinking about things at work too:)
Bread and circuses - keep the population fat, dumb and happy so you can keep doing whatever the hell you want...
...that if I slip in something new, they'll usually give me the benefit of the doubt enough to dance to it anyway.
Yup - I'm finding the same thing when I'm DJ'ing. I've been in a particular scene for a few years now and have been playing the sounds they wanted to hear for most of that. Over the past 6 months or so, I've been putting in some new, different sounds - seeing if they'll take. Guess what - the other night, after a couple of "normal" tracks, I spent the rest of the time spinning "new" stuff - they loved it - enough people there had heard me spin some of these tracks here and there at other gigs, so they just went into the groove and enjoyed it. We kept critical mass (especially with the ladies - keep sexy women dancing and the floor will be packed:) and anyone who hadn't heard these sounds before just got swept up with the rest who stayed on the floor. Magic:)
Companies kept promising cool new VR products for the masses but nothing surfaced... people let go of the dream.
Like I said in an earlier post - VR games died because it made people sick thanks to an imbalance between their motion-detecting inner-ear and what their eyes and ears were telling them.
NASA started using VR systems as a very inexpensive way of training astronauts in dealing with motion sickness. Back in the early days of the Space Shuttle program, the scientist astronauts were often puking and left operating at half efficiency 'cos they weren't used to it. Turns out the early astronauts were doing it too (scene from Apollo 13:) but weren't telling anyone 'cos they were big, tough test pilots, etc:)
To help give astronauts their spacelegs BEFORE they went into space, all sorts of mechanisms were devised to have the astronauts eye's show they were moving (eg: rotating in a cabin, etc) while their inner-ears said they were not moving at all. VR was one of the cheapest, smallest and easiest things to do that.
Eventually, trainees became accustomed to it and weren't as likely to get motion sickness so soon. It still happens, but they're used to it.
One of the big "secrets" is not to move around quickly - also, don't move your head about the place so much - move your whole body, etc. This and inertial control sorta explain a lot of the slow/wierd movements you see on NASA TV, no?:)
this has to be pretty damn important for the behind-the-scenes push for VR game consoles
Been there, done that. Remember all those VR games and consoles that came out years ago? Where are they now? Gone. Know why? Made ya sick!
Ever played a VR game for a long time? When your eyes and ears are saying that you're running down a corridor, changing direction, looking around and moving about, but the motion-detection system that is your inner-ear says "Nope, this butthead's just standing in one place" then your brain gets confused and PUKE!!!
Total immersion VR = totally immersed in your own vomit
See, here's the deal. Your brain is programmed at some *really* base level to equate an imbalance between what your eyes and ears are saying vs what your inner ear is saying with "Shit, I've eaten something nasty, get it out of my system! PUKE!!!!" Now, fastwind through to today where you're sitting in a car that's going around corners, accelerating, etc - keep your head down and try to read. Eyes say you're (sorta) sitting still but your inner ear says "Hell no, I'm staggering all over the place" - how long until you feel queasy? Most people get it pretty damned quickly.
I was using a friend's VFX-1 headset to fly a flight sim. It was great. Best loop I've ever done on a computer 'cos I could just move my head about to see wing, horizon, etc. But, after an hour or so of zapping around the place, I *had* to stop or I would have been sick.
So no amount of new tech and toys will bring back VR consoles. Either we find some way to trick the inner ear into thinking we're moving at the same rate the vision/sound system is showing OR we breed a bunch of people who have disconnected their inner ears:)
I know a few guys who would rather land their Jumbo before looking at their wives in lingeree (sp?).
I know of a few whoose partners would dress up like a stewardess to serve them dinner while flying. If things were going really well in the relationship, the guy might also be lucky and get a "pilot job":)
Activating the ol' automatic pilot - best scene ever!
I would say that more likely the cause of Australian SPAM dropping off is that BigPond turned off access to port 25 - all mail MUST go out via their mail servers. This would certainly stop a large number of zombies and spammers in their tracks (BigPond was always getting in trouble for the volume of SPAM it produced).
Of course, it's also pissed off some of the staff at my office who can no longer use our mail server while they're out and about (at least until I get the non-port 25 authenticated system running with our providers:)
Unionize, you say? This actually has happened at none other then McDonald's itself. One store totally unionized - and that store was shut down. You can read about it in Fast Food Nation, the book.
Wow - didn't know about that one - will have to pass that on to a few of the Unionists I know who still eat at McDonalds:)
Thanks for your other comments - interesting stuff - would be great to see some corporate responsibility. As ever - the question is - what are we going to do about it? How do we, the people, make it happen?
And society for creating rich/poor differentials great enough to encourage the crime.
(snip)
So I think it's perfectly acceptable to blame society for a group's wrongdoings, as long as we continue to blame the individuals as well.
How did society create this differential? In your example, blame was assigned to tangible things (robber, security system manufacturers, police, etc) then along comes this intangible "society" thing.
Blame can only be laid on a tangible entity - usually people, or perhaps a board of directors, a committee, etc.
Where is this thing called "society" that caused the differential? Maybe it was a whole lot of people who allowed themselves to be swayed by consumerism, didn't force governments to address root cause issues that lead to imbalance/larceny, etc.
As soon as it becomes "society" it seems like people just immediately switch off, saying "it's too big an issue" or "what can I do" or "it's everyone else, not me"
If we blame society, then we blame ourselves first and everyone around us. If we make up society and society is to blame then we are to blame.
Which brings us back to "we are responsible for our actions" and "you can't blame society" and "what the frack are you going to do about the world around you?":)
Society is made of people - so this statement is self-contradictory.
Yes and no - I had considered the aspect of scaling up to a society, but wanted to stick to the one aspect first and see how the post was treated.
Yes, society is made of people. But, imagine a society where people acknowledged their responsibilities and acted on them. Voting, perhaps? Politicians remembering their promises and not evading the issue? Judges being able to say "Yeah yeah, MacDonalds are assholes for overheating their coffee - you guys are fined - but this woman is a dickhead for putting a freakin hot cup of coffee between her legs - all proceeds to go to a charity both parties must agree on!"
Dream world - no?:)
But in all seriousness - society is simply a scaling of the general actions of the people within it. If responsibility was a major issue, wouldn't a mob with burning torches have marched on the whitehouse by now demanding that "Dubya" (W = Wanker - how coincidental:) be kicked out immediately because he squandered the lives of many on a false pretense?
Obviously, the American people don't really care or it would have happened by now, no?
No, I'm not picking on the folks in the USA - I run the same line here in Australia - "We'll never have a people's revolution here because no one's passionate about these issues!" - instead, you get:
"Damn I hate Howard - he's such a fuckwit - we gotta do something about it - oooohhhh - look - the football's starting and the BBQ is ready - lets talk about this later!"
So I don't see that "You are responsible for your actions" and "You can never say 'Society is to Blame'" are self contradictory. Society is not to blame - the collective actions of the people within it are.
Maybe I'm just too simplistic? Maybe I'm just sick and tired of people not freakin DOING anything about the bullshit surrounding them - they just say "I'm powerless to prevent it" (as if - don't like hurricanes? move! Don't like your job prospects? Do something to change them - ranging from writing to congress, organising a "Don't buy from these bastards" campaign, reskill in something else, move, etc)
Slashdot Mirror
It's more like when you reach 40, your life clock (that crystal on your palm) turns from red to black and you're on Lastday.
:)
Ahhhh, but you're talking "Logan's Fun (with Jessica)" - the TV show.
Taking it from the book, the life cycle was in 7 year increments - first 7 years in creche/school, next 7 years having fun, final 7 years being productive, etc until your life clock ticks to black at 21.
Guess it was easier to change it to a longer cycle and get older actors in the movie/tv show
This reminds me of a classic Stan Freberg skit - one of the "Herman Horne does Hi Fi" - where he lampoons Hi Fi hobbyists of the 50's - he's just described a full on sound system, but without speakers:
:)
Interviewer: But what about the speakers?
Horne: The whole house becomes a speaker, you move into the garage!
(snip a few lines)
Horne: As you and your wife sit of an evening, shivering in your garage....
Brilliant stuff - if you've never heard Freberg's "Herman Horne" skits, you absolutely HAVE to get them - it fits so well with modern hobyists/geeks/obsessive types:
Horne: They can sit there and watch their husband suffer with old equipment that has been obsolete for at least a week!
Damn, where's the problem - just populate the ship with a collection of "swinger" couples - they'll bonk their partners AND the others no problem.
:)
Thus, everyone's getting it, there's none of that monogomous bullshit to get in the way (when the invetible "I like you're partner, dude!" happens) and so sex is just natural and fun. Wooo hoo.
Of course, getting them to do any science, stay focussed, etc - well - that could be tricky....
Mission Control: "Hey guys, it's time to do the orbital approach manouver.... Hey guys... Awww come on you lot, quit that.... Are we going to have to turn off the jacuzi again????"
When I was a kid at high school I was helping a guy who'd picked up a Lisa for his office. It wound up at my place while I learned how to set up a DB for him in Omnis. There I was with the biggest "home/office" computer I'd ever seen on a table in our lounge, mucking about with a mouse (woooo - never seen something like that before) and it even had an external HDD (which sat on top, had to be turned on before the computer so it could spool up to speed and sounded like a DC-8 engine-start as it did :)
:)
Had a few of the local geek-kids coming over to inspect it - amazing times
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?
:)
Didn't some people use the deck chairs on the titanic as floatation aids after it went down? I seem to recall stories about this and someone mentioned it was used in the recent movie.
Perhaps rearranging isn't so bad if you can later use those same chairs to survive
I went to one of this guy's marketing seminars which, while interesting in some areas, turned me off totally when he touched briefly on Internet marketing. He was advocating spamming (this was back in 2000) and saying it was OK.
He also gave out a CD with a couple of mailing lists on it and tools for bulk-sending. He claimed the lists were opt-in but a quick check revealed a few addresses that I knew weren't. Additionally, another company I knew that went tried to use the list to send updates about their products and almost had their link vigilanty'd into non-existance.
"Death's to good for them!"
If I'd never made the big leaps into the unknown, I wouldn't have moved between two cities within Australia, winding up having a blast in the bigger one I moved to. Then I wouldn't have taken the opportunity to relocate to the USA, having an incredible time in the process. Then I may not have come back to Australia and certainly wouldn't have gone to Argentina, having yet another great time and learning so much about life, etc.
:)
Finally, I'm taking leaps into the Unknown by concentrating more on working with aircraft than with computers.
Sure, I may not have a big house, great car or a cushy position in an office. But I have seen large chunks of the world, met some wonderful people, experienced things well over half the world never will and got some great stories to tell.
My son is only 7 and he's travelled around the world almost three times now (travelling to visit family and friends in various countries) plus he's flown in light aircraft, helicopters and even balloons.
So yeah, I vote *1* for taking the big leap into the Unknown. It's been pretty damned wild so far and I wouldn't have missed it for the world
Talk about inaccurate stereotypes.
Dunno where you're from mate but I've seen it at least once per year over the past five years or so...
And as per another post, yeah, they'd been marinated for ages before being cooked.
As to throwing them on "Barbie" - well, yeah, but you'd better be careful or she might deck ya for tryin!
I'm a Scorporiotarian --- what should I do??
:)
A true Scorpio wouldn't need to ask!
Secondly it was an over-hyped problem that was never really going to affect desktop PC's and the like, which was over-sold to the public and never materialised.
:)
:) One insurance based system calculated premiums and totals completely wrong because it had 2000 values coming before 1996 values when summing a long workers comp claim, etc. As a result, the system refused to write cheques, or wrote cheques too big/small, etc. Rather embarrassing and, given the number of clients hanging off the application (and thus the number of claims processed, cheques produced, etc), leading to a lot of pissed off people in the first few months of 2000 :)
:)
Agreed that it was overhyped, but there were desktop level systems that would have died without work. I saw a number of them during testing and prep during '98/'99
The classic was all those xBase systems that used Substr(Dtos([datevale]),3), effectively stripping off the "useless" first 2 digits (apologies if my syntax is incorrect - it's been a while
Of the work I did on Y2K (including a large Telco, small organisations, a couple of software houses and a public transport service), I'd say about 70% of it was valid. The rest was all being done to dot the i's, cross the t's and keep the lawyers at bay if anything went wrong (eg: "Yes your honour, we did do all that we could to check. It's strange that this one got through but it's not for want of trying, so tell those bastards to naff off and take someone else to court"
NC-17?????
:)
Damn, when did Boeing go and release an NC-17 version of their transport aircraft?
Man, if a cock or pussy was shown on prime time TV could you imagine what would happen?
A few people might get horny and go fuck madly?????
Oh, yeah, sorry - Puritan descent - forgot about that bit... yeah - Janet Jackson's Nipple - woooooo... big fat whoop-de-doo deal
Using just a nitrous oxide charger and a balloon, I was never higher than low Earth orbit.
:)
:)
Try 1,500 litres of medical grade nitrous, a regulator and a stack of balloons. We hit deep space time after time, taking quite a number of pax with us (we weren't called "Tank Sluts" for nothing
Combine that with Amyl Nitrate (sp?) and whoops - there goes reality...
Basically, take a big ol' hit of Nitrous and, when the "nang nangs" hit, do a real big hit of Amyl. What happens next is just awesome - the hand of god comes down out of the heavens, opens the top of your head, sticks a finger into your brain and goes like a mix-master/egg-beater.
Don't try this at home, kids!
So, what the hell rates a 10?
Landing on an aircraft carrier at night.
Ahh yes, thus the famous saying:
"The three best things in life are a good landing, a good orgasm, and a good bowel movement. The night carrier landing is one of the few opportunities in life where you get to experience all three at the same time."
Damn I'd love to try that!
People, in general, are not skeptical enough. There is way too much trust (this also applies to politics, religion, etc).
:)
Being a cynical bastard, I see it not as being too much trust but as being too little thought. People don't want freedom of choice, they want freedom from choice. They don't want to have to think about things, they just want their information spooned out to them so they can accept it without thinking.
At the end of the hard day of drudgery at the office, they want to come home, relax and stop having to think about things (or, to be really cynical, continue to not think about things as they have avoided thinking about things at work too
Bread and circuses - keep the population fat, dumb and happy so you can keep doing whatever the hell you want...
Absolute funniest bits though were if you typed in "consult guide about (whatever)" eg:
:)
consult guide about heart of gold
Back would come this long spiel asking how you'd heard about it, it didn't exist and would you please check yourself in for reconditioning.
All sorts of other gems lurked within, just waiting for you to ask about them.
A close second was saying to Ford Prefect:
Say to Ford what about my house
response: It's not a house, it's a home
Crack up
...that if I slip in something new, they'll usually give me the benefit of the doubt enough to dance to it anyway.
:) and anyone who hadn't heard these sounds before just got swept up with the rest who stayed on the floor. Magic :)
Yup - I'm finding the same thing when I'm DJ'ing. I've been in a particular scene for a few years now and have been playing the sounds they wanted to hear for most of that. Over the past 6 months or so, I've been putting in some new, different sounds - seeing if they'll take. Guess what - the other night, after a couple of "normal" tracks, I spent the rest of the time spinning "new" stuff - they loved it - enough people there had heard me spin some of these tracks here and there at other gigs, so they just went into the groove and enjoyed it. We kept critical mass (especially with the ladies - keep sexy women dancing and the floor will be packed
Companies kept promising cool new VR products for the masses but nothing surfaced... people let go of the dream.
:) but weren't telling anyone 'cos they were big, tough test pilots, etc :)
:)
Like I said in an earlier post - VR games died because it made people sick thanks to an imbalance between their motion-detecting inner-ear and what their eyes and ears were telling them.
NASA started using VR systems as a very inexpensive way of training astronauts in dealing with motion sickness. Back in the early days of the Space Shuttle program, the scientist astronauts were often puking and left operating at half efficiency 'cos they weren't used to it. Turns out the early astronauts were doing it too (scene from Apollo 13
To help give astronauts their spacelegs BEFORE they went into space, all sorts of mechanisms were devised to have the astronauts eye's show they were moving (eg: rotating in a cabin, etc) while their inner-ears said they were not moving at all. VR was one of the cheapest, smallest and easiest things to do that.
Eventually, trainees became accustomed to it and weren't as likely to get motion sickness so soon. It still happens, but they're used to it.
One of the big "secrets" is not to move around quickly - also, don't move your head about the place so much - move your whole body, etc. This and inertial control sorta explain a lot of the slow/wierd movements you see on NASA TV, no?
this has to be pretty damn important for the behind-the-scenes push for VR game consoles
:)
Been there, done that. Remember all those VR games and consoles that came out years ago? Where are they now? Gone. Know why? Made ya sick!
Ever played a VR game for a long time? When your eyes and ears are saying that you're running down a corridor, changing direction, looking around and moving about, but the motion-detection system that is your inner-ear says "Nope, this butthead's just standing in one place" then your brain gets confused and PUKE!!!
Total immersion VR = totally immersed in your own vomit
See, here's the deal. Your brain is programmed at some *really* base level to equate an imbalance between what your eyes and ears are saying vs what your inner ear is saying with "Shit, I've eaten something nasty, get it out of my system! PUKE!!!!" Now, fastwind through to today where you're sitting in a car that's going around corners, accelerating, etc - keep your head down and try to read. Eyes say you're (sorta) sitting still but your inner ear says "Hell no, I'm staggering all over the place" - how long until you feel queasy? Most people get it pretty damned quickly.
I was using a friend's VFX-1 headset to fly a flight sim. It was great. Best loop I've ever done on a computer 'cos I could just move my head about to see wing, horizon, etc. But, after an hour or so of zapping around the place, I *had* to stop or I would have been sick.
So no amount of new tech and toys will bring back VR consoles. Either we find some way to trick the inner ear into thinking we're moving at the same rate the vision/sound system is showing OR we breed a bunch of people who have disconnected their inner ears
I know a few guys who would rather land their Jumbo before looking at their wives in lingeree (sp?).
:)
I know of a few whoose partners would dress up like a stewardess to serve them dinner while flying. If things were going really well in the relationship, the guy might also be lucky and get a "pilot job"
Activating the ol' automatic pilot - best scene ever!
Are we the message?
:)
Wow - Marshall McLuhan was right - the medium is the message!
It's been staring us in the face the whole time - every reproductive act is spreading the word(s).
I would say that more likely the cause of Australian SPAM dropping off is that BigPond turned off access to port 25 - all mail MUST go out via their mail servers. This would certainly stop a large number of zombies and spammers in their tracks (BigPond was always getting in trouble for the volume of SPAM it produced).
:)
Of course, it's also pissed off some of the staff at my office who can no longer use our mail server while they're out and about (at least until I get the non-port 25 authenticated system running with our providers
Unionize, you say? This actually has happened at none other then McDonald's itself. One store totally unionized - and that store was shut down. You can read about it in Fast Food Nation, the book.
:)
Wow - didn't know about that one - will have to pass that on to a few of the Unionists I know who still eat at McDonalds
Thanks for your other comments - interesting stuff - would be great to see some corporate responsibility. As ever - the question is - what are we going to do about it? How do we, the people, make it happen?
And society for creating rich/poor differentials great enough to encourage the crime.
:)
(snip)
So I think it's perfectly acceptable to blame society for a group's wrongdoings, as long as we continue to blame the individuals as well.
How did society create this differential? In your example, blame was assigned to tangible things (robber, security system manufacturers, police, etc) then along comes this intangible "society" thing.
Blame can only be laid on a tangible entity - usually people, or perhaps a board of directors, a committee, etc.
Where is this thing called "society" that caused the differential? Maybe it was a whole lot of people who allowed themselves to be swayed by consumerism, didn't force governments to address root cause issues that lead to imbalance/larceny, etc.
As soon as it becomes "society" it seems like people just immediately switch off, saying "it's too big an issue" or "what can I do" or "it's everyone else, not me"
If we blame society, then we blame ourselves first and everyone around us. If we make up society and society is to blame then we are to blame.
Which brings us back to "we are responsible for our actions" and "you can't blame society" and "what the frack are you going to do about the world around you?"
Society is made of people - so this statement is self-contradictory.
:)
:) be kicked out immediately because he squandered the lives of many on a false pretense?
:)
Yes and no - I had considered the aspect of scaling up to a society, but wanted to stick to the one aspect first and see how the post was treated.
Yes, society is made of people. But, imagine a society where people acknowledged their responsibilities and acted on them. Voting, perhaps? Politicians remembering their promises and not evading the issue? Judges being able to say "Yeah yeah, MacDonalds are assholes for overheating their coffee - you guys are fined - but this woman is a dickhead for putting a freakin hot cup of coffee between her legs - all proceeds to go to a charity both parties must agree on!"
Dream world - no?
But in all seriousness - society is simply a scaling of the general actions of the people within it. If responsibility was a major issue, wouldn't a mob with burning torches have marched on the whitehouse by now demanding that "Dubya" (W = Wanker - how coincidental
Obviously, the American people don't really care or it would have happened by now, no?
No, I'm not picking on the folks in the USA - I run the same line here in Australia - "We'll never have a people's revolution here because no one's passionate about these issues!" - instead, you get:
"Damn I hate Howard - he's such a fuckwit - we gotta do something about it - oooohhhh - look - the football's starting and the BBQ is ready - lets talk about this later!"
So I don't see that "You are responsible for your actions" and "You can never say 'Society is to Blame'" are self contradictory. Society is not to blame - the collective actions of the people within it are.
Maybe I'm just too simplistic? Maybe I'm just sick and tired of people not freakin DOING anything about the bullshit surrounding them - they just say "I'm powerless to prevent it" (as if - don't like hurricanes? move! Don't like your job prospects? Do something to change them - ranging from writing to congress, organising a "Don't buy from these bastards" campaign, reskill in something else, move, etc)
Yeah - I'm ranting