OMG QUARTZ!!!! Do your stuff Apple lawsuit ninjas!
*cue myriad legions of ninjas with briefcases and Apple logos on their masks vaulting over the top of Microsoft headquarters and hacking away at the unsuspecting trademark*
I am thinking something along the lines that it is a gene for general higher level brain function.
This can't be the case. The language area of the brain is a specific set of neural structures. Damaging them but leaving the rest of the brain alone has been known to screw up people's ability to speak and to understand speech, but does not affect the rest of the brain. Likewise, there are certain brain disorders which result in huge detriments to a person's intelligence but leave the language area untouched, thus permitting them to speak with flawless eloquence and articulation, even though they make no intellectual sense whatsoever.
There has been some (not very thorough) investigation into the differences between the human language area, and its biological equivalent in apes. You can bet your left armpit that once somebody identifies the genes responsible for their differences, there will be experiments involving the splicing of the human version into ape DNA.
I mean, seriously. That's how all important stuff happens; even events which are supposedly the product of human action depend largely on the fact that certain people were in the right place at the right time.
It does seem true that (1) as humans we have brains that are language-capable to a unique degree, and (2) human children who do not learn language by a key age (between 8 and 12 years usually) completely lose the ability to ever learn it. So many lingusts/linguistic anthropologists seem to think it's a combination of both, although there is little real consensus.
There's a lot more consensus than you seem to think. Language itself is memetic in nature, whereas the ability to speak is quite firmly biological, and has the same requirement as any other complex neurological function: If it doesn't get awakened while the brain is still in a certain learning phase, it never works the way it's supposed to.
Anyone remember the ocular implants? Their success wasn't perfect with people who were blind from birth, because those patients' vision neurons didn't develop correctly, or wound up getting used for something else. But nobody would even consider claiming that vision is memetic....
If I am purchasing music, paying per song or album, then it is MY music.
No it isn't. You didn't make the music, so the contents of your wallet are your only say over who gets to listen to it. All you own is a license to listen.
The industry believes it has the right to enforce that license, and to revoke it as it sees fit. If you want them to think otherwise, you'll have to attack the very foundation of their side of the argument by redefining their concept of creative rights. Do you think society would welcome that plan?
There is no possible way that they can make this movie as bad as the 1999 version.
There are a lot of really bad movies out there, it's true. Most of the moderately bad ones are boring; the truly terrible ones actually end up being fun to watch simply because they're such absolute crap. When they premiered the infamous "Manos: The Hands of Fate," the audience actually laughed uproariously.
But there is no redemption for the '99 Beowulf.
Imagine it.... Sitting there for two hours, unable to divert your gaze from the putridly pointless hellspawn on the screen before you. Your very soul, wrapped in a straitjacket with a crappy techno soundtrack, screams in vain for help -- and yet nobody will help you. Nobody will help you!!!
YOU CAN FEEL YOUR BRAIN MELTING AND DRIBBLING OUT AROUND YOUR TERRIFIED EYEBALLS!!!!!
Watching Beowulf '99 is much like being lobotomized.... one brain cell at a time. If Hollywood EVER outdoes that despicable feat, I'll wear a cowboy hat and then eat it.
No more copy-protected CDs?! But why?! I was having so much fun scribbling around the edges with my beloved Sharpees..... I can still do that even if there's no point, right? Right?!?!
I know the sex jokes are coming (no pun intended), I can see them forming on the edge of the minds of the masses.
Please. Just don't bother making them. It's not worth it, people......
There's a certain episode of an anime in which the label "Intel Outside" is seen very briefly on the innards of a ballistic missile as someone's trying to defuse it. Coincidence?
O'Neill came up with a boatload of ideas that were really, really useful....
....but, as you will surely come to accept after months and months of misery, nobody gives a crap about O'Neill. Therefore, we have to rely on TV, movies, and video games to poularize his brilliant plans enough that the public will actually put its support behind them.
Language does influence thought, simply because people will try to understand something in a way that makes sense from the perspective of their language... But the language won't fundamentally limit their thoughts. I'm sure you can think of times when you had an idea or an emotion that you lacked words for; if the claim in your post was true, you would not be capable of such thoughts.
Do you really, truly believe that somebody can be colorblind just because they don't have color words more specific than "dark" and "light?"
Language makes for a convenient labeling system, but it doesn't define your thoughts. Now somebody mod up the siblings to this post so that their useful content can be read as conveniently as the parent.....
Slashdot Mirror
OMG QUARTZ!!!! Do your stuff Apple lawsuit ninjas!
*cue myriad legions of ninjas with briefcases and Apple logos on their masks vaulting over the top of Microsoft headquarters and hacking away at the unsuspecting trademark*
Nerdy ~= cool. Now get out of the 70s and help me beat the other posters to the "in Soviet Russia" finish line.
That is so unbelievably cool that I found myself downloading rock covers of the Tetris theme song to listen to while I rewatched the video.....
other way around. malaria cures syphilis, not vice versa.
obviously you have no experience in contracting live-threatening diseases through acts of absurd stupidity.
This can't be the case. The language area of the brain is a specific set of neural structures. Damaging them but leaving the rest of the brain alone has been known to screw up people's ability to speak and to understand speech, but does not affect the rest of the brain. Likewise, there are certain brain disorders which result in huge detriments to a person's intelligence but leave the language area untouched, thus permitting them to speak with flawless eloquence and articulation, even though they make no intellectual sense whatsoever.
There has been some (not very thorough) investigation into the differences between the human language area, and its biological equivalent in apes. You can bet your left armpit that once somebody identifies the genes responsible for their differences, there will be experiments involving the splicing of the human version into ape DNA.
By complete accident, obviously.
I mean, seriously. That's how all important stuff happens; even events which are supposedly the product of human action depend largely on the fact that certain people were in the right place at the right time.
There's a lot more consensus than you seem to think. Language itself is memetic in nature, whereas the ability to speak is quite firmly biological, and has the same requirement as any other complex neurological function: If it doesn't get awakened while the brain is still in a certain learning phase, it never works the way it's supposed to.
Anyone remember the ocular implants? Their success wasn't perfect with people who were blind from birth, because those patients' vision neurons didn't develop correctly, or wound up getting used for something else. But nobody would even consider claiming that vision is memetic....
"The marketers have responded with PIE."
Wait, since when do marketers speak Proto-Indo-European?
.... oh, wait, never mind.
No it isn't. You didn't make the music, so the contents of your wallet are your only say over who gets to listen to it. All you own is a license to listen.
The industry believes it has the right to enforce that license, and to revoke it as it sees fit. If you want them to think otherwise, you'll have to attack the very foundation of their side of the argument by redefining their concept of creative rights. Do you think society would welcome that plan?
There is no possible way that they can make this movie as bad as the 1999 version.
There are a lot of really bad movies out there, it's true. Most of the moderately bad ones are boring; the truly terrible ones actually end up being fun to watch simply because they're such absolute crap. When they premiered the infamous "Manos: The Hands of Fate," the audience actually laughed uproariously.
But there is no redemption for the '99 Beowulf.
Imagine it.... Sitting there for two hours, unable to divert your gaze from the putridly pointless hellspawn on the screen before you. Your very soul, wrapped in a straitjacket with a crappy techno soundtrack, screams in vain for help -- and yet nobody will help you. Nobody will help you!!!
YOU CAN FEEL YOUR BRAIN MELTING AND DRIBBLING OUT AROUND YOUR TERRIFIED EYEBALLS!!!!!
Watching Beowulf '99 is much like being lobotomized.... one brain cell at a time. If Hollywood EVER outdoes that despicable feat, I'll wear a cowboy hat and then eat it.
It won't enslave anybody? I guess that means it doesn't qualify for welcomable-overlord status....
....Right?!
But at least they'll get a short-tempered, socially inept 14-year-old kid to pilot it, right?
No more copy-protected CDs?! But why?! I was having so much fun scribbling around the edges with my beloved Sharpees..... I can still do that even if there's no point, right? Right?!?!
Don't worry, the cooling system is its own built-in precautionary measure against such an occurence. It has a built-in supply of liquid nitrogen!
"Hasta la vista, baby."
I know the sex jokes are coming (no pun intended), I can see them forming on the edge of the minds of the masses. Please. Just don't bother making them. It's not worth it, people......
There's a certain episode of an anime in which the label "Intel Outside" is seen very briefly on the innards of a ballistic missile as someone's trying to defuse it. Coincidence?
O'Neill came up with a boatload of ideas that were really, really useful....
....but, as you will surely come to accept after months and months of misery, nobody gives a crap about O'Neill. Therefore, we have to rely on TV, movies, and video games to poularize his brilliant plans enough that the public will actually put its support behind them.
(yomigaeru, Gandamu.)
A tip for NASA:
Shift-F-U-N-D
To be blunt: No they don't.
Language does influence thought, simply because people will try to understand something in a way that makes sense from the perspective of their language... But the language won't fundamentally limit their thoughts. I'm sure you can think of times when you had an idea or an emotion that you lacked words for; if the claim in your post was true, you would not be capable of such thoughts.
Do you really, truly believe that somebody can be colorblind just because they don't have color words more specific than "dark" and "light?"
Language makes for a convenient labeling system, but it doesn't define your thoughts. Now somebody mod up the siblings to this post so that their useful content can be read as conveniently as the parent.....