Yeah, I don't agree with that.
As someone else said, text messaging has more to do with convenience. You can send an receive texts during class, dinner, meeting (rude), or wherever.
More generally, I would say that texting is the preferred alternative when you don't want to interrupt what you are doing to communicate with a person. Suppose you just want to say one thing to them -- something funny, something about what you're currently doing. Instead of calling them and taking your attention (and that of everybody who's with you) away from what you're in the process of doing, and also interrupting them, you just text. It's that simple.
Besides, quite often you text because you don't actually want to have a long conversation with them. You just want to say one thing (and maybe talk about it LATER), not get dragged into a full-length discussion. So you text.
Generally, if I find myself in a text conversation that lasts more than 2-3 send/receives, I stop texting and just dial.
Help me out here. According to your statement, either the "juvenile what-if question" IS news and the grandparent poster is making a useful addition to the discussion, or the story ISN'T particularly interesting/useful and the poster wasn't making a useful contribution to the discussion by correctly pointing that out to us.
SAAB was definitely one of the more promising Sci-Fi shows around.
It was mature in that there were no ridiculous alien species and warfare was very much a serious business - there was less reliance on rely on flashy special effects and cool guns or technobabble and more focus on conflict and tragic destruction. I remember vaguely the episode "Abandon All Hope" where
It was human in that the main characters were flawed in ways that were fundamental and related to their scarred past. It wasn't the sort of cheap comical character flaws (Roddney McKay in SG:A) which provide for briefly interesting/amusing plot elements but ultimately fail to make up a significant and serious part of the character. In SAAB, these people were struggling with inner demons on a daily (or episodic) basis, and they often made mistakes. The human race as a whole made many mistakes (the AIs, In-Vitros, Season 1 finale) which made viewers question themselves as human beings.
Space: Above and Beyond was mature, it was human, and it was classic in its grittiness. It reminds me of my favorite show of all time, the new Battlestar Galactica, which is at the moment enjoying immense success. Honestly, now that I think about it, I'm led to wonder why SAAB didn't get the same reception. Sure, BSG is far removed in quality from anything we've ever seen before - but SAAB almost shares a cousin-like resemblence to it, at least to my mind.
Could you please refrain from posting spoilers out in the open?
I only read the very first sentence of your post before stopping.
If I had mod points I'd mod you down. Not because of the content of your post, but because of your carelessness and lack of respect for other people wanting to preserve their excitement by not reading up on spoilers.
Anyway, thanks a lot. I'm sure I'm not the only one to be miffed.
You're probably right about the Viper landings in combat. But the footage with the Flak guns coming around is too cool for me to complain about it being reused.
"I just can't help but notice that it reuses more footage than any other show I've ever seen."
It also focuses more on plot and character development than any other sci-fi show I've seen recently. So I don't really mind.
It's been my experience that people who use "alot" instead of "a lot" without knowing that it's wrong generally don't know what there is such a word as "allot," or what it means either.
The article seemed a bit too patronizing for my tastes, trying to explain customer reluctance by saying that Win2k "worked too well."
But in a way, they are right. It certainly worked well enough not to merit a replacement worth several thousand dollars (company-wide).
The open source community obviously has a leg up on proprietary software on this front - pretty much everyone is willing to upgrade to the next stable release. There really is little reason not to (short of a disastrous new course taken by the distro). With stuff that's really expensive like Windows, however, Microsoft is forced to endure its mistakes and to relive them again and again - even if WinXP deals with the problem better and is more secure, it's not guaranteed that the Win2k users will switch over (depends on how much they value the new additions).
"On top of that, Jobs' insistence that the machine have no fan made for a very hot board."
Why on earth would he object to putting a fan in it? Did he think it'd make too much noise?
My favorite part of the article:
"Apple refused to install a fan to fix the problem and instructed users to drop the machine on their desk to bang the chips back into place."
What a concept! Usually when you drop things, they break. But when you drop an Apple, well, it just works (TM).
"If a commercial website can't support itself via its audience, that website should die."
Not all websites carrying ads are "commercial" - many are personal.
More importantly, in order to be supported by your audience you need to first reach a critical userbase. That can only be achieved after you set up the website and are operating for some period.
Finally, I use Firefox and block most of the annoying ads. However, I don't feel particularly angry at the advertisers. The reason is because I think of it in the following way:
Some rich corporate bastard is going to pay for me to browse this site, and all I have to do is put up with the annoying monkey for a while.
That way, there's no money out of my pocket, and I can put my donations somewhere else, where advertising funds don't reach.
I'll do my best to ignore the irrelevant and unnecessary insults you've hurled at me and try to answer you in a calm and fair manner.
"There's no more error in anthropomorphizing the emergent behavior of natural selection than there is in anthropomorphizing the emergent behavior of that heterogenous collection of cells, molecules, bacteria, and electricity that we call people."
Um...no? Semantics aside, the difference is that people are self-aware and deliberate. Natural selection, by definition, is not. Also note this fundamental concept of both moral and natural philosophy (using antiquated terms only because you seem to try to pass yourself off as a philosophy type): The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
"A model, even one which we know to be wrong in some cases, can be a valuable stepping stone for discusssion, expression, and analysis."
Agreed. As a student of the social sciences, I understand the value of models moreso than perhaps my counterpart in biology or chemistry would. My entire field flips upside down, sideways, and back again, based upon what model you are using (try international relations, for example). I can also tolerate two models that are contradictory at some level if the two present unique advantages to me - it's why I can contemplate and use both quantum mechanics and general relativity without having my head explode from the contradictions.
However, saying that it is acceptable for people to use models at the expense of that which is recognized as being scientifically and fundamentally true simply because it's "easier" for people to understand seems to me to be quite silly. The model is useful, but it presupposes an understanding of the fundamentally true, and you advocate using the model and discarding the truth. Forgive me, but none of the philosophy professors I've met at Rutgers seem to advocate a similar self-deluding approach.
"Those that are particularly interested will then go on to further sources and will most likely bring their understanding even closer to your own. Those that aren't interested wouldn't listen to your account anyway."
That's just my point - people have not proceeded further into study to bring their understanding closer to what is correct. Instead, they adopt these improper approximations as being theory and spread them. The result is that we have people disseminating information about modern evolutionary theory that is incorrect, and using their thus-formed opinions of the analytical tools of evolutionary biology to draw incorrect conclusions about life, the universe, and everything.
Note that when I made my post, it was not only in response to the article, but also in anticipation of the sort of posts such a topic would get. Look over the hundreds of Slashdot replies and you'll see that I was anticipating. There are many posters who wrote interesting replies, but ultimately were mislead because they accepted the baggage concepts that came along with the anthropomorphization of evolution.
Calling me a hard-liner on anything is silly (although perhaps I shouldn't blame you). I'm not against shaping explanations to people's intellect. The point that I'm trying to make is that this is not an example of that - it is not a conscious effort by the enlightened to make knowledge more accessible to the ignorant, as you would seem to believe.
My initial sentence was more for rhetorical value than anything else - I am not putting a blanket limitation on anthropomorphization. I'm not saying that anthropomorphizing with respect to evolution is an evil and nefarious thing. What I am doing instead is pointing out that, given the current level of understanding that people have about evolution, it's a
I think the punchline was that RNA is autocatalytic (it can replicate itself whereas DNA cannot do so without RNA). Here is a somewhat unsatisfying Wikipedia article (more history than biology).
RNA also performs a multitude of functions in transcription & protein synthesis.
Retroviruses would probably be a good thing to look at for information.
Agree with your point on ID arguments and how they assume that self-awareness is a subset of intelligence.
However:
On the other hand, if "intelligence" is "the ability to aquire and apply information," then evolution is "intelligent."
You assume that there is some sort of central authority, or maybe a knowledge-base for evolution. As far as my understanding goes, the success or failure of a certain species/phyla with a particular "adaptation" has no bearing on an unrelated species developing a similar structure.
For example, I highly doubt that the bats told the ancestors of the birds about this great thing called "winged flight."
To put it more simply, the implications of what you say is that the same evolutionary mistakes will not happen twice because the first one was observed to have failed. What I'm saying is that evolution will always keep making the same mistakes, kind of like that guy in Momento.
"I'm perfectly capable of using this metaphor without being confused by it just as I talk quite happily talk about my optimisation code "discovering" an optimal solution without being confused about my computer's status as a person."
Aha, but that's because you are fully aware it's a program. Metaphors are indeed both powerful and efficient, I'm not arguing that. But in order that they may be used, people have to know what parts of the metaphor reflect the subject, and which parts are superfluous.
The problem of anthropomorphizing (spelled it right this time) with evolution is that not only is it not comparable to human beings (like your computer program) but it is also not even an active process in and of itself. I myself, in writing my posts, have some difficulty in maintaining neutral language. Still, so long as both I and my audience understand what is intrinsic to the topic and what is a product of my own expressive limitations, everything is fine. However, everybody seems to have jumped on the bandwagon here as far as evolution is concerned, and we've forgotten (or granted, many of us might not even know) what it's really about.
I'll give you an example of a common misunderstanding of evolutionary "adaptations."
We say that copious and consistent use of antibacterial soap is not a good idea because it will produce strains of bacteria that are resistant to the antibacterial agent.
Now, saying such a thing is perfectly fine if all of us understand what is going on. The problem is that we don't. You see, mutation is independent in origin from evolutionary pressure. The resistant strain of bacteria already exists within the population - the use of antibacterial soap doesn't cause the mutation. What it does do, however, is increase the fraction of the population that possesses this mutation by eliminating those that do not. Thereafter, any bacteria that reproduce from amongst that population will have the plasmid.
Let's look at another example. This one will be slightly less historical because I can't think of a strong one off the top of my head (I'm in political science now, not biology). Yeah, I'll use a movie example because I simply can't think of one (wanted to do something with kangaroos and other mammals but I'm drawing a blank). In the movie Evolution, the first dinosaur-like animals require air that is higher in nitrogen and sulfur content (I think) than the air of earth. When they come up to the surface, all of them asphyxiate and die. One of them, however, gives birth to a new one which has "adapted" to the air (the premise of the movie is that these things hyper-evolve so there's a compression of time). Now, ignoring for a moment the non-serious nature of the movie, let's focus on that occurrence. Most people wouldn't find anything wrong with that - and there is indeed nothing wrong with that. "There was evolutionary pressure on them and so they evolved." Fine. But we're forgetting again what I just said before - the process that produces these mutations is independent from the evolutionary pressure. So in a sense it's almost silly to say that they evolved "because there was evolutionary pressure," since the evolutionary pressure only determined which ones would survive, not how they would survive. Additionally, the only guarantee that the species will adapt is statistical - more often than not it will simply die out because the numbers didn't work out.
Anyway, I'm straying from the point. It's the end of a long week and I'm too long out of touch with biology. Hopefully I biologist will come around to elaborate my point.
Please, for the love of God (or Darwin if you're so inclined), Stop anthropromorphizing evolution!
I'm not accusing the people who anthropromorphize as being bad scientists - I'm sure that they have the proper understanding of evolution and natural selection and similar concepts within their mind. However, what you have to realize is that your audience may not. Making consistent use of words like innovation and discovery, and general verbs associated with multicellular life makes the article sound more like journalism than science.
I realize that it's probably convenient to not have to worry about portraying modern evolutionary theory in the right manner, but it's also responsible. I wouldn't be bringing this up if I didn't run into it every single day - we anthropromorphize to such a degree that eventually we ourselves begin to believe that evolution really is a deliberate mechanism that acts towards creating the "perfect" life form.
Different species do not "discover" new and better ways to hunt down their prey, or to conduct photosynthesis.
Natural selection is "differential success in reproduction."
If you are going to characterize evolutionary progress as a group of 12 monkeys on a typewriter and infinite time, then they would not produce Shakespeare as a final product because they wouldn't know when they had it!
My problem with Mensa's standards...
on
MSN Sponsors Mensa
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have no personal experience with Mensa members. I remember being referred to the "practice exam" by a friend in high school, that's where I picked up some preliminary information on the group itself.
That said, my main problem with Mensa is not their stated goal of creating an environment in which intelligent discourse can flourish.
My problem is also not with the fact that, in order to accomplish such goals, they must exclude a certain (sizable) portion of the population from their "enlightened organization."
The issue that I personally have with Mensa is that their standards are established not to accept people with some acceptable level of genius and potential, but rather to accept people who are "better than 99% of the rest of humanity."
Thus, they are elitist in the purest sense of what I understand the term to mean. If their standards of admission were designed with the intent to merely keep the general body to a basic level of intelligence and competency, why index them against the average IQ of contemporary human beings? Bear in mind that, according to their admission testing, at no time can more than 2% of the population be members of Mensa (assuming universal application). The implicit assumption is that the vast majority of humanity is incapable of civil discourse and intelligent discussion (at least on the level that they would like), but I see no reason why this should be the case.
I see the sub-par intellectuality of humankind as a practical failure, the burden of which is borne by the entire race. To me there appear no deep reasons to believe that the population must be divided into the two subgroups of which we are so fond: the brains and the brawn. It is true that some people will always be smarter, wiser, and more capable than others. However, I see such considerations to be largely irrelevant except when one considers the scholarly pursuits of the natural and social sciences. And in such a case, I would argue that chance and circumstance (by the latter I mean the state of society and associated research at the time of advancement) play a role so important that they may overshadow small differences in individual ingenuity.
From the article, Jackson screened remastered portions from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy that featured a looming Gollum and battle dust that virtually fell onto the audience.
I do hope that Lucas doesn't adopt that particular idea of Peter Jackson's.
Jar Jar is bad enough when projected on a screen. I'd hate to think about how I'd feel if he were "out and about" in the audience, so to speak.
Please, Jar Jar, stay where you are. Don't come any closer.
"A former fan herself (her favourite character as a kid was, not surprisingly, Mr. Spock), the actress, despite her vested interest, has never been shy about dissing her own show."
I'm inclined to stop reading the article right about there. Even a Klingon could express himself in more sophisticated terms than that.
I was under the impression that a mutual agreement was reached long ago among all the respectable peoples of the world that the aforementioned phrase was not to be used, on pain of death.
"often times the rabidity with which "wronged" plaintiffs style their demands leads me to wonder if they are simply taking advantage of the momentary shift in power."
Add to that the following: Many of these plaintiffs, then, would be exactly the type of people who would engage in exploitation if they were at the opposite end of the power balance.
Anyway, I realize that some readers will be inclined to call me an idealist, others will point out the obvious nature of my observations, but nonetheless I still don't think the magnitude of this development has hit home in most people's heads.
Personally, I find it depressing that people cannot determine for themselves the reasonable reparations they are due, and refrain from going any further.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I don't agree with that. As someone else said, text messaging has more to do with convenience. You can send an receive texts during class, dinner, meeting (rude), or wherever. More generally, I would say that texting is the preferred alternative when you don't want to interrupt what you are doing to communicate with a person. Suppose you just want to say one thing to them -- something funny, something about what you're currently doing. Instead of calling them and taking your attention (and that of everybody who's with you) away from what you're in the process of doing, and also interrupting them, you just text. It's that simple. Besides, quite often you text because you don't actually want to have a long conversation with them. You just want to say one thing (and maybe talk about it LATER), not get dragged into a full-length discussion. So you text. Generally, if I find myself in a text conversation that lasts more than 2-3 send/receives, I stop texting and just dial.
Help me out here. According to your statement, either the "juvenile what-if question" IS news and the grandparent poster is making a useful addition to the discussion, or the story ISN'T particularly interesting/useful and the poster wasn't making a useful contribution to the discussion by correctly pointing that out to us.
SAAB was definitely one of the more promising Sci-Fi shows around.
It was mature in that there were no ridiculous alien species and warfare was very much a serious business - there was less reliance on rely on flashy special effects and cool guns or technobabble and more focus on conflict and tragic destruction. I remember vaguely the episode "Abandon All Hope" where
It was human in that the main characters were flawed in ways that were fundamental and related to their scarred past. It wasn't the sort of cheap comical character flaws (Roddney McKay in SG:A) which provide for briefly interesting/amusing plot elements but ultimately fail to make up a significant and serious part of the character. In SAAB, these people were struggling with inner demons on a daily (or episodic) basis, and they often made mistakes. The human race as a whole made many mistakes (the AIs, In-Vitros, Season 1 finale) which made viewers question themselves as human beings.
Space: Above and Beyond was mature, it was human, and it was classic in its grittiness. It reminds me of my favorite show of all time, the new Battlestar Galactica, which is at the moment enjoying immense success. Honestly, now that I think about it, I'm led to wonder why SAAB didn't get the same reception. Sure, BSG is far removed in quality from anything we've ever seen before - but SAAB almost shares a cousin-like resemblence to it, at least to my mind.
Could you please refrain from posting spoilers out in the open?
I only read the very first sentence of your post before stopping.
If I had mod points I'd mod you down. Not because of the content of your post, but because of your carelessness and lack of respect for other people wanting to preserve their excitement by not reading up on spoilers.
Anyway, thanks a lot. I'm sure I'm not the only one to be miffed.
You're probably right about the Viper landings in combat. But the footage with the Flak guns coming around is too cool for me to complain about it being reused.
"I just can't help but notice that it reuses more footage than any other show I've ever seen."
It also focuses more on plot and character development than any other sci-fi show I've seen recently. So I don't really mind.
It's been my experience that people who use "alot" instead of "a lot" without knowing that it's wrong generally don't know what there is such a word as "allot," or what it means either.
Agreed.
The article seemed a bit too patronizing for my tastes, trying to explain customer reluctance by saying that Win2k "worked too well."
But in a way, they are right. It certainly worked well enough not to merit a replacement worth several thousand dollars (company-wide).
The open source community obviously has a leg up on proprietary software on this front - pretty much everyone is willing to upgrade to the next stable release. There really is little reason not to (short of a disastrous new course taken by the distro). With stuff that's really expensive like Windows, however, Microsoft is forced to endure its mistakes and to relive them again and again - even if WinXP deals with the problem better and is more secure, it's not guaranteed that the Win2k users will switch over (depends on how much they value the new additions).
"On top of that, Jobs' insistence that the machine have no fan made for a very hot board."
Why on earth would he object to putting a fan in it? Did he think it'd make too much noise?
My favorite part of the article: "Apple refused to install a fan to fix the problem and instructed users to drop the machine on their desk to bang the chips back into place."
What a concept! Usually when you drop things, they break. But when you drop an Apple, well, it just works (TM).
Here's a snippet from my conversation:
Human: Are you real? ALICE: Yes I am a real artificial intelligence. Human: Prove it ALICE: It is self-evident.
"If a commercial website can't support itself via its audience, that website should die."
Not all websites carrying ads are "commercial" - many are personal.
More importantly, in order to be supported by your audience you need to first reach a critical userbase. That can only be achieved after you set up the website and are operating for some period.
Finally, I use Firefox and block most of the annoying ads. However, I don't feel particularly angry at the advertisers. The reason is because I think of it in the following way:
Some rich corporate bastard is going to pay for me to browse this site, and all I have to do is put up with the annoying monkey for a while.
That way, there's no money out of my pocket, and I can put my donations somewhere else, where advertising funds don't reach.
I believe he's referring to the medical doctor, not Dr. Baltar.
As far as I know, Dr. Baltar doesn't even know that she has cancer.
What about ex post facto concerns?
Or are those peculiar to things like state Constitutions?
I think most people understand what I'm trying to say already, but let me elaborate for those who don't:
Suppose the GPL is updated along those lines. What grounds can they find to charge Google and Amazon for past violation?
Or maybe they would charge for continued use in the future?
I'll do my best to ignore the irrelevant and unnecessary insults you've hurled at me and try to answer you in a calm and fair manner.
"There's no more error in anthropomorphizing the emergent behavior of natural selection than there is in anthropomorphizing the emergent behavior of that heterogenous collection of cells, molecules, bacteria, and electricity that we call people."
Um...no? Semantics aside, the difference is that people are self-aware and deliberate. Natural selection, by definition, is not. Also note this fundamental concept of both moral and natural philosophy (using antiquated terms only because you seem to try to pass yourself off as a philosophy type): The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
"A model, even one which we know to be wrong in some cases, can be a valuable stepping stone for discusssion, expression, and analysis."
Agreed. As a student of the social sciences, I understand the value of models moreso than perhaps my counterpart in biology or chemistry would. My entire field flips upside down, sideways, and back again, based upon what model you are using (try international relations, for example). I can also tolerate two models that are contradictory at some level if the two present unique advantages to me - it's why I can contemplate and use both quantum mechanics and general relativity without having my head explode from the contradictions.
However, saying that it is acceptable for people to use models at the expense of that which is recognized as being scientifically and fundamentally true simply because it's "easier" for people to understand seems to me to be quite silly. The model is useful, but it presupposes an understanding of the fundamentally true, and you advocate using the model and discarding the truth. Forgive me, but none of the philosophy professors I've met at Rutgers seem to advocate a similar self-deluding approach.
"Those that are particularly interested will then go on to further sources and will most likely bring their understanding even closer to your own. Those that aren't interested wouldn't listen to your account anyway."
That's just my point - people have not proceeded further into study to bring their understanding closer to what is correct. Instead, they adopt these improper approximations as being theory and spread them. The result is that we have people disseminating information about modern evolutionary theory that is incorrect, and using their thus-formed opinions of the analytical tools of evolutionary biology to draw incorrect conclusions about life, the universe, and everything.
Note that when I made my post, it was not only in response to the article, but also in anticipation of the sort of posts such a topic would get. Look over the hundreds of Slashdot replies and you'll see that I was anticipating. There are many posters who wrote interesting replies, but ultimately were mislead because they accepted the baggage concepts that came along with the anthropomorphization of evolution.
Calling me a hard-liner on anything is silly (although perhaps I shouldn't blame you). I'm not against shaping explanations to people's intellect. The point that I'm trying to make is that this is not an example of that - it is not a conscious effort by the enlightened to make knowledge more accessible to the ignorant, as you would seem to believe.
My initial sentence was more for rhetorical value than anything else - I am not putting a blanket limitation on anthropomorphization. I'm not saying that anthropomorphizing with respect to evolution is an evil and nefarious thing. What I am doing instead is pointing out that, given the current level of understanding that people have about evolution, it's a
Yes I remember this from high school AP biology.
I think the punchline was that RNA is autocatalytic (it can replicate itself whereas DNA cannot do so without RNA). Here is a somewhat unsatisfying Wikipedia article (more history than biology).
RNA also performs a multitude of functions in transcription & protein synthesis.
Retroviruses would probably be a good thing to look at for information.
The perfect rating for this book would run like this:
"It's so good, even Homer would read it!"
Agree with your point on ID arguments and how they assume that self-awareness is a subset of intelligence.
However:
On the other hand, if "intelligence" is "the ability to aquire and apply information," then evolution is "intelligent."
You assume that there is some sort of central authority, or maybe a knowledge-base for evolution. As far as my understanding goes, the success or failure of a certain species/phyla with a particular "adaptation" has no bearing on an unrelated species developing a similar structure.
For example, I highly doubt that the bats told the ancestors of the birds about this great thing called "winged flight."
To put it more simply, the implications of what you say is that the same evolutionary mistakes will not happen twice because the first one was observed to have failed. What I'm saying is that evolution will always keep making the same mistakes, kind of like that guy in Momento.
"I'm perfectly capable of using this metaphor without being confused by it just as I talk quite happily talk about my optimisation code "discovering" an optimal solution without being confused about my computer's status as a person."
Aha, but that's because you are fully aware it's a program. Metaphors are indeed both powerful and efficient, I'm not arguing that. But in order that they may be used, people have to know what parts of the metaphor reflect the subject, and which parts are superfluous.
The problem of anthropomorphizing (spelled it right this time) with evolution is that not only is it not comparable to human beings (like your computer program) but it is also not even an active process in and of itself. I myself, in writing my posts, have some difficulty in maintaining neutral language. Still, so long as both I and my audience understand what is intrinsic to the topic and what is a product of my own expressive limitations, everything is fine. However, everybody seems to have jumped on the bandwagon here as far as evolution is concerned, and we've forgotten (or granted, many of us might not even know) what it's really about.
I'll give you an example of a common misunderstanding of evolutionary "adaptations."
We say that copious and consistent use of antibacterial soap is not a good idea because it will produce strains of bacteria that are resistant to the antibacterial agent.
Now, saying such a thing is perfectly fine if all of us understand what is going on. The problem is that we don't. You see, mutation is independent in origin from evolutionary pressure. The resistant strain of bacteria already exists within the population - the use of antibacterial soap doesn't cause the mutation. What it does do, however, is increase the fraction of the population that possesses this mutation by eliminating those that do not. Thereafter, any bacteria that reproduce from amongst that population will have the plasmid.
Let's look at another example. This one will be slightly less historical because I can't think of a strong one off the top of my head (I'm in political science now, not biology). Yeah, I'll use a movie example because I simply can't think of one (wanted to do something with kangaroos and other mammals but I'm drawing a blank). In the movie Evolution, the first dinosaur-like animals require air that is higher in nitrogen and sulfur content (I think) than the air of earth. When they come up to the surface, all of them asphyxiate and die. One of them, however, gives birth to a new one which has "adapted" to the air (the premise of the movie is that these things hyper-evolve so there's a compression of time). Now, ignoring for a moment the non-serious nature of the movie, let's focus on that occurrence. Most people wouldn't find anything wrong with that - and there is indeed nothing wrong with that. "There was evolutionary pressure on them and so they evolved." Fine. But we're forgetting again what I just said before - the process that produces these mutations is independent from the evolutionary pressure. So in a sense it's almost silly to say that they evolved "because there was evolutionary pressure," since the evolutionary pressure only determined which ones would survive, not how they would survive. Additionally, the only guarantee that the species will adapt is statistical - more often than not it will simply die out because the numbers didn't work out.
Anyway, I'm straying from the point. It's the end of a long week and I'm too long out of touch with biology. Hopefully I biologist will come around to elaborate my point.
I'm not accusing the people who anthropromorphize as being bad scientists - I'm sure that they have the proper understanding of evolution and natural selection and similar concepts within their mind. However, what you have to realize is that your audience may not. Making consistent use of words like innovation and discovery, and general verbs associated with multicellular life makes the article sound more like journalism than science.
I realize that it's probably convenient to not have to worry about portraying modern evolutionary theory in the right manner, but it's also responsible. I wouldn't be bringing this up if I didn't run into it every single day - we anthropromorphize to such a degree that eventually we ourselves begin to believe that evolution really is a deliberate mechanism that acts towards creating the "perfect" life form.
I have no personal experience with Mensa members. I remember being referred to the "practice exam" by a friend in high school, that's where I picked up some preliminary information on the group itself.
That said, my main problem with Mensa is not their stated goal of creating an environment in which intelligent discourse can flourish.
My problem is also not with the fact that, in order to accomplish such goals, they must exclude a certain (sizable) portion of the population from their "enlightened organization."
The issue that I personally have with Mensa is that their standards are established not to accept people with some acceptable level of genius and potential, but rather to accept people who are "better than 99% of the rest of humanity."
Thus, they are elitist in the purest sense of what I understand the term to mean. If their standards of admission were designed with the intent to merely keep the general body to a basic level of intelligence and competency, why index them against the average IQ of contemporary human beings? Bear in mind that, according to their admission testing, at no time can more than 2% of the population be members of Mensa (assuming universal application). The implicit assumption is that the vast majority of humanity is incapable of civil discourse and intelligent discussion (at least on the level that they would like), but I see no reason why this should be the case.
I see the sub-par intellectuality of humankind as a practical failure, the burden of which is borne by the entire race. To me there appear no deep reasons to believe that the population must be divided into the two subgroups of which we are so fond: the brains and the brawn. It is true that some people will always be smarter, wiser, and more capable than others. However, I see such considerations to be largely irrelevant except when one considers the scholarly pursuits of the natural and social sciences. And in such a case, I would argue that chance and circumstance (by the latter I mean the state of society and associated research at the time of advancement) play a role so important that they may overshadow small differences in individual ingenuity.
I seem to recall a certain bounty hunter for hire named Bobo Fett...
From the article, Jackson screened remastered portions from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy that featured a looming Gollum and battle dust that virtually fell onto the audience.
I do hope that Lucas doesn't adopt that particular idea of Peter Jackson's.
Jar Jar is bad enough when projected on a screen. I'd hate to think about how I'd feel if he were "out and about" in the audience, so to speak.
Please, Jar Jar, stay where you are. Don't come any closer.
"A former fan herself (her favourite character as a kid was, not surprisingly, Mr. Spock), the actress, despite her vested interest, has never been shy about dissing her own show."
I'm inclined to stop reading the article right about there. Even a Klingon could express himself in more sophisticated terms than that.
I was under the impression that a mutual agreement was reached long ago among all the respectable peoples of the world that the aforementioned phrase was not to be used, on pain of death.
The coolest thing, by far, about Wikipedia, is the culture articles. No traditional encyclopedia can possibly record that like Wikipedia does.
Whether it be language trends, popular contemporary figures, information on small localities and online subcultures, unconventional ideas in science and technology, or books, an encyclopedia model like that of Wikipedia is the only thing that can compile and store such stuff.
And I think I exceeded the reasonable link limit for that post.
So I quickly deleted my post and sent this one instead. Now, I'll wait patiently and hope I don't get Score 5, Funny.
You sure that delete key is working properly?
Forgot something.
"often times the rabidity with which "wronged" plaintiffs style their demands leads me to wonder if they are simply taking advantage of the momentary shift in power."
Add to that the following: Many of these plaintiffs, then, would be exactly the type of people who would engage in exploitation if they were at the opposite end of the power balance.
Anyway, I realize that some readers will be inclined to call me an idealist, others will point out the obvious nature of my observations, but nonetheless I still don't think the magnitude of this development has hit home in most people's heads.
Personally, I find it depressing that people cannot determine for themselves the reasonable reparations they are due, and refrain from going any further.