You say only paranoid people would have an issue. So, I suppose a woman who was treated for a sexual assault and doesn't want everyone on the planet knowing about it would be clinically paranoid to want to opt out? I suppose a man who is HIV+ and doesn't want to broadcast his status for fear of social repercussions is paranoid if he doesn't want to share his records with the world? Are they "clinically paranoid?"
If the data gets stolen (and it will - we can't even keep information on our nuclear weapons programs safe), whoever takes it won't be interested in John Doe's eczema or Jane Doe's bursitis; they'll do a search for the good stuff and use the fact that John Smith is HIV+ or that Jane Smith was raped and terminated the resultant pregnancy, and they'll use that information to blackmail those people.
You also have a rather naive view of the chances that glitches will occur. What happens when the inevitable software glitches occur and people wind up inadvertently hiding things that they don't care to hide or revealing things they want to keep to themselves? What happens when a relevant condition in a patient is accidentally hidden and the doctor prescribes something that mixes poorly with another condition?
It's not paranoia. It may be hard for you to imagine, but there are people in the world who have things they want to keep hidden, and their desire to do so is hardly paranoia - it's extremely sensible.
What about a system where you have a card with a chip on it that stores all your medical info (locally), but requires your fingerprint be read into a local scanner to decrypt it? That way, if someone stole your purse you wouldn't necessarily lose your privacy, but you'd have a convenient way of carrying the information with you. In case of emergency where you don't have your card, a special request could be put in (and would require your fingerprint to access the data that way as well) and the data could be sent on a specific machine that is secured solely for the purpose of getting this data, rather than through a web browser. No forms to fill out (it's all on your card) but you can also keep your data somewhat secure.
Personally, I loathe the idea of health information being on the web, but not so much for my privacy as for the privacy of people who have medical conditions that have a high social stigma associated with them. I don't care if someone finds out I had pneumonia 2 years ago or mono when I was a teen; someone who is HIV+, who is transgender, or who has been a victim of sexual assault, for example, might have an entirely different take, with stakes quite a bit higher than the typical person.
Who says Satan had a choice in the matter? That's what I mean about tools playing parts without realizing that's what they're doing and it seeming to be their choosing. Basically, what I'm saying is that just because Satan (or Kara Thrace) seemed to behave like he (or she) could make choices and do things of his (or her) own free-will, that may not have been true.
It's a basic philosophical riddle that we all face - it sure *feels* like I have free will, it sure *feels* like I can make choices in what I do, but who's to say that the choices I make are actually choices and not simply pre-programmed actions? Who's to say my angst over making choice a over choice b isn't completely worthless because I don't actually have a choice? I'm simply stipulating that it is possible, in the context of Galactica, that there may be at least 2 categories of beings: those who really don't have any choices and those who really do, and that Kara Thrace may have been one of the ones who had no choice and thus was subject to special rules that don't apply to those who actually have free will.
I can't give you a specific citation on the lack of free-will thing except to say that in virtually every popular culture portrayal of angels I've run across, angels are different from humans in that they have no choice in what they do in the larger scheme of things - they have a destiny and while they might be able to vary a bit in how they fulfill it, they don't have a choice about fulfilling it. For the purposes of a discussion of Galactica, I'd say "popular culture" is a good enough citation. I'm no biblical scholar - and if it not being the case in Judeo-Christian texts that angels have no free will, there certainly are instances of special beings who are pre-programmed to do all kinds of tasks in other cultures - they're under a compulsion, geas, etc. The idea of special rules for special beings is not without precedent.
I'm on my first - I got an Elite when the Micro Center by me ran a sale when the Elite was first introduced. I've had no issues with it at all, though I probably don't use it as much as some, and almost certainly not for as many consecutive hours as some - maybe 12 hours a week, though there was a month when I was ill where I probably played 5-6 hours at a shot every day, and 10+ hours if I had friends over to visit.
Maybe I'm lucky, maybe the Elite version was more solidly constructed, no idea. That's got to be really frustrating having it break - and I do admit to pangs of fear every time I'm bringing home a new game I'm eager to play: will this be the time it breaks? Fortunately those pangs are momentary and totally outweighed by the fun:)
You are making the mistake in thinking that Kara Thrace is the same as everyone else. I don't think she is.
In some mythologies, there are multiple classes of beings besides just god and people. You have angels, demons, spirits, and any other number of creatures that have special treatment. For example, in Judeo-Christian mythology, Angels are special creatures that can do all kinds of things and yet they don't really have free will - that's reserved for humans.
So, in Galactica, I thought they did a pretty good idea of making it clear that Kara Thrace isn't like "people" - she's something else. God can manipulate her in any number of ways that it might not be able to manipulate "real" people. Kara was a tool to accomplish something - it just happens that she didn't know what she was, and happened to have a more complex inner life than other tools. At least, that's what makes sense to me - it lets miraculous things like Kara's return happen, but doesn't invalidate the other characters.
And I agree - Moore making shit up kinda wrecks it, but I think it's actually pretty entertaining to try and figure out how to account for the inconsistencies. I'm not remotely religious, but I enjoyed it as entertainment.
Who says the Galactica "God" is all powerful and all knowing?
Jehovah in the Old Testament is hardly all-knowing (he screws up and has to restart civilization with the flood, in the garden of Eden he's caught by surprise at one point, etc.) In virtually every other religion, gods are simply much more advanced people and hardly omniscient or omnipotent - the Greek and Roman gods especially so, and I dare say that Galactica takes as much of its godstuff from those traditions as from the Judeo-Christian ones. There might have been a few nods to the Norse mythos if I remember right, and certainly those gods were ANYTHING but omniscient and omnipotent - really just jumped up mortals.
As to motivation and why Galactica god would nave "needed" or "wanted" to have the characters act like that - the point was made on the show that it is impossible to understand god in terms of human motivations; god isn't good or evil, god is a force of nature. If you want some more traditional explanations, look again at the Judeo-Christian mythos: God sends his only begotten son down to Earth to suffer for our sins, god messes with Job's head to prove his faith, god does all kinds of really crazy stuff that makes absolutely no sense unless you say something along the lines of "it makes sense to god."
As to why Galactica-God would have made certain people behave the way they did, first, who's to say that they were people, strictly speaking? The characters who were manipulated may not have had any choice in what ultimately happened to them (the greek concept of destiny here - you'll wind up in spot Z, which is very vaguely defined, but how you actually get there and what it means when that happens is up to you), or they might not have had ANY free will at all and been simply scripted bots for the other characters to interact with. Why would Galactica-God do this? The answer, in this case, I suspect is the same as why any teacher or parent puts trials in front of their students or children - to teach them. Why did my teacher back in 2nd grade make me solve arithmetic problems when she had could do it herself? Why did she make me solve them on paper instead of letting me use a calculator? Why have me read excerpts from various readings and explain them when they'd already been explained and there would likely be absolutely nothing new that a 7 year-old could add to that? To teach me and help me grow. Within the context of Galactica, the god there wants the characters to grow and develop and learn, it seems to me - they have to make choices, solve problems, become more true to who they are, and one way of doing that is to set up situations where they have the possibility to do that.
Or, on yet another level, what motivation do I have for launching Civ 4 and trying to conquer the world? What motivation do I have for logging into World of Warcraft and having my character beat the crap out of other characters? What motivation do I have for creating a universe for my friends to go tromping through when I run Mutants and Masterminds for them? The answer is: it amuses me to do so. In the context of Galactica, god:colonials::me:Civ4 nation I control - the rudimentary AI in the game wouldn't be able to remotely comprehend what I'm doing on any level (and yes, I know, the AI in the game is not actually self-aware or anything - which is my point: god in Galactica is operating on a vastly different level than the characters)
I suspect your problem with the god stuff in Galactica comes more from the conflict between what you imagine a god to be and what the writers of the show had Galactica-God be - you're attributing things to that god that just weren't attributed or were more metaphorical than literal. And, in fact, if they had made a point that god was literally *all* powerful and *all* knowing and infinite, then yes, as a story it would be entirely pointless.
Personally, I'm as non-theistic as anyone, and while I know what you mean about the idea of god being a cop out, in this case I absolutely disagree with you. I
I wound up cracking the screen of my iPhone (I fell down a flight and a half of rain-slick stairs). Unfortunately, AppleCare (which I didn't buy for it) doesn't cover damages to the phone's screen, so I was dreading the cost of getting it repaired. It still worked, mind you - it was just ugly because the crack was all over, and so while I could still use the touch screen, I couldn't easily read stuff on it. On top of that, I had unlocked it - canceled service with AT&T because it's crap in my area, and I have t-mobile on it, so I didn't know if they'd even be willing to repair the thing. So - strikes against me: my fault it broke, water damage (rainy!), no AppleCare, unlocked and on an unauthorized carrier...
I went to the Genius Bar and they replaced it. For free - usually it's a $250 fee, but they waived it for me for some reason.
A second one, just because:
The HDD in my MacBook died (though I didn't know it was the HDD, I couldn't figure out what was wrong - it just wouldn't boot up and I didn't feel like fucking with it). Took it into the apple store on my lunch break to get it looked at. I didn't have applecare for the macbook, but they diagnosed it for me for free. Guy tells me he'll take it in back and fix it in a jiff. Comes back in 10 minutes and gives it to me along with the service quote which was $100 (for the new HDD). "Oh, yeah, also, your battery was kinda old and there were some problems with those so I put in a new one for you and here's a better power cord since yours is kinda twisted." Free. Also gave me the old HDD to dispose of since I asked for it. (Also, just want to say: Time Machine freaking rocks! I was 100% back up and running within an hour, with everything exactly as it was before my HDD died)
Speaking as someone who (unfortunately) has a T61 at work, I can also say the T61 is a steaming pile of shit.
It can't handle on-close sleeping well: if I close the lid, I know that when I open it back up it'll take something like 30 minutes before performance will go back to normal (the processor and HD seem to thrash a lot - I don't know what this is) Considering that it is a laptop, which means it is portable, which means people will want to move it around, which probably means closing the lid frequently, this is a rather huge problem. My MacBook (not even a pro) is the only laptop I've ever found that handles sleep elegantly - why is making "go to sleep when I close the lid, wake up when I open it, and preferably inside of 5-10 seconds" so freaking difficult for anyone but Apple to manage? Is it that Windows can't handle sleep well? Is it a hardware issue? This BAFFLES me.
The built-in wireless is shit - it seems to randomly shut itself off (need to press the blue button on the keyboard to get it back on, which doesn't always work), and the software that takes over the management of wireless connections from windows is even less intuitive and useable than the Windows wireless manager. I'm a reasonably bright person, but it took me a freaking HOUR to figure out how to get it to connect to a wireless connection that doesn't broadcast the ID. Oh, and it COULDN'T REMEMBER THE FREAKING NETWORK, so every time I wanted to reconnect, I had to go through a long process of setting it back up. On my MacBook, it's a simple matter of clicking on the wireless icon, clicking on "join other network" and typing the network name - box pops up for authentication, and I'm in, and it REMEMBERS THE FREAKING CONNECTION without me having to remind it or do anything.
Given that I use my laptop for work, and given that my time costs money, I'm more than happy to spend a little extra (maybe 5 hours worth of my time) to have a tool that does what I need it to do, when I need it to do it, how I need it to be done, and without making it incredibly annoying.
It has better specs than my MacBook, and yet my MacBook is able to effortlessly run both OS X and Windows XP (in Parallels) simultaneously, while the T61 sort of shits itself if I try to launch SPSS and Firefox at the same time. I wound up wiping the t61 and giving it to one of my interns for data entry.
The "Hurr, if they don't listen then let them die!" response that you had is pretty common, unfortunately.
As I said, not everyone learns the same way, and certain people with certain personality traits tend to behave more impulsively when under conditions of extreme arousal (or, unfortunately, often duress) than others. You might be perfectly willing to write those people off, but fortunately, other people aren't misanthropic idiots and actually understand that spending some efforts trying to figure out how to teach people with different learning needs important lessons can pay massive dividends that far outweigh the cost of the research being done.
We've recently expanded our research program and have been trying to hire recent graduates to work as basic research assistants/project co-ordinators (they'd be doing basic tasks like helping to figure out what measures we want to use in projects, working with senior researchers to learn how to handle data management tasks, supervising interns, that kind of thing). The position is pretty good - 30k a year, 60 paid days off a year, good health and dental insurance for $10 a month, 401k/retirement matching and a pension, 100% tuition reimbursement, etc. There are massive professional development opportunities (credit on publications, presentations, opportunities to network) and it essentially guarantees that anyone who does it well will get into their graduate program of choice. Basically, if you're taking a year off between undergraduate and grad school, this is the place to do it.
The applicants are about 50/50. One half of them is comprised of people who are genuinely interested in the field, want to do this as a bridge between undergrad and grad because they feel maybe they didn't get enough internship time, maybe they didn't have perfect grades or 99th percentile GREs, or maybe they want a break from school and a chance to get some pratical research experience. The other half is comprised of little shits who have an epic sense of entitlement and think that just because they managed to sit still for 4 years (or, usually, 5 or 6) they're special in some way.
One recent applicant I interviewed came in and pretty much the first thing out of his mouth was, "What can you do for me?" Another told me she wouldn't take less than $40,000 for the job, despite the fact that it was only 10 minutes into the first interview and she wasn't even qualified for the position. Since I work at a university, I've taken the opportunity to educate these kids, and I let them know during the interviews (which were rather truncated) that we weren't interested.
But, then, when I was interviewing people for positions in the corporate world, about half the time I'd get great applicants, with the rest being clueless idiots who thought that since they knew how to turn a computer on they were entitled to 6-figure salaries. I don't think it's so much a "narcissistic graduates" problem as a "narcissistic people" problem. It's always been amazing to me how completely oblivious to how they come off these people are, but I guess that's why it's a personality disorder, eh?
I'm part of a team doing research into the area of HIV/AIDS education and prevention by developing better intervention methods. What we've found is that the people who were most likely to engage in unsafe behaviors were also the least likely to benefit from traditional educational interventions. Some people have personality traits that seem to interfere a great deal with long-term self-protective behaviors when faced with the prospect of short-term pleasure.
One of the things we're trying is to recreate (as best we can through imagery and visualization) a sexually-charged atmosphere for individuals while we teach them about safe-sex - video games and movies and the like via the web - but we add in questions throughout, and let the participant choose what they do. We're a long way from done with the studies, but some of the early responses are encouraging.
Of course, for our study it's working with individuals who do know the facts about HIV/AIDS but simply don't find themselves able to focus on safer-sex when the time is at hand to use that knowledge, which is rather different than the situation with most high-risk Africans (who may not have the knowledge, or may not have condoms, or may have massive cultural indoctrination to overcome, or who may not be having sex by choice, or who may be married to someone cheating on them, etc.) The point is, many approaches are needed because not all people learn the same.
So cool, make some video games, do whatever you can and see what works.
He specifically mentioned shocking people, and in fact referenced the Stanford experiments while doing so. I understand what the original reference was to, but the one to which I was replying isn't it.
I've seen footage from the Milgrom experiment, which is what you're referring to.
It isn't about people being "given permission to be sadistic" - it was about people caving into authority figures when told to do something that they didn't agree with. The vast majority of the people who were being told to give extreme shocks were actually arguing with the researcher and refusing several times to keep going, but eventually they gave in. Far from being sadistic (taking pleasure in inflicting pain), the participants were nearly hysterical in several instances, begging to not be made to continue shocking a person they thought was seriously hurt or dying, and in several cases nearly physically assaulted the researcher, or threatened violence.
What it demonstrated was that most people, when they are confronted with an authority figure telling them to do something they know is wrong but that they've already kind of done anyway, will eventually give in and do the wrong thing.
This isn't really relevant to the thread, but it irks me that the experiment was so incredibly poorly represented in your post as something that it absolutely wasn't.
You have a police officer who thinks it's funny to joke about being corrupt and is dumb enough to do so publicly - he's a public servant and absolutely should be held to a very high standard, ESPECIALLY when it comes to spouting off stupid things that make his organization look bad.
I work for a university (and, by extension, am a state employee since it's a state school) as a researcher and instructor, and I would be fired in a heartbeat if I were so stupid as to put something up, under my own name, where our research participants could see it, that was similar. "Offline, reading 'Red Dragon' to learn how to convince the mentally ill to cut off their own faces."
This is enough to throw into question the validity of his work. Maybe next time he'll think twice before joking around about abusing the public trust.
There are ways to deal with this kind of thing and to make the game a bit more interesting at the same time. Make it so that players can do quests to get keys that will poof them directly into an instance so they don't have to hang out in front - like attunement but that actually gives you a benefit beyond just letting you inside.
For quests in general, make more instanced versions of quests. I *really* hate having to wait for one mob that's on a 5 minute timer that is being camped by 100 other players looking to do that same quest. Yes, I *could* group up with some of those players, but that's still 20ish groups and the hassle of trying to get a team for something you don't need a team for. So, just have the house/hut/yurt where Goblin Leader Guy spawns be a tiny instance - you run to it, go in, kill the guy and get out.
Additionally, supplement the standard quests with grinding quests. If a player just wants to grind, rather than forcing them to grind in a place where people who want to go for quests are, give them something like a bulletin board - "There are a bunch of bears that have taken over this cave/campsite/graveyard! Go wipe 'em out! (Pays X gold, Y xp)" Yes, people would still grind on mobs outside of these quests, but it would make it possible to avoid overcrowding if you wanted to.
I would *love* to see WoW turned into 4 servers instead of however many they have right now. Rp+PVE, Normal PVE, Rp+PVP, Normal PVP. Maybe 1 other - a "hardcore" server (you die, that's it) with a ladder, ala Diablo II.
Many not-for-profit businesses could benefit from this kind of thing. I used to volunteer at several and there was always a need for things like thumb drives and external hard drives.
The first of the new paradigms should be "you can customize it to your liking." I have a Kindle, which I absolutely love, but I would change a couple of the buttons around and actually disable one if I could - I should be able to configure them how I want them, but I can't. I also have a couple of video game consoles and would love to be able to set the control configurations up for all my shooter-type games to work the same way. Jump should (for me) always be in a certain spot, same for shooting, etc. It's all software now and I don't know why they don't let me do this kind of thing.
The second of the new paradigms is the way information is presented. I want to be able to have more ubiquitous information displays - let me have a small HUD that gets projected onto my glasses that shows certain bits of data that I choose (kind of like the Dashboard in OS X) and arrayed in a way I like. Also make displays context sensitive - when I'm indoors, say at my office, have my display use an RFID chip or something to know that I'm at the office and configure my display to office tasks (email, internal IM, calendar, etc.) vs. when I'm outdoors and might want something else like temperature/weather/time, bus schedule, an arrow showing the route I need to take to get where I'm going, map, whatever I want). Basically augmented reality. I could have as much or as little info displayed as I wanted.
I dream of things like having a device capable of doing facial recognition and giving me a little info (public profile) on people I meet (and only if they are willing to share that/allow it to be accessed) or that could listen to music around me and let me know the artist/song, or that I could look at a bar-code and blink (or something) and it'd give me info on that, or could test the air and tell me what I'm smelling, etc.
For the inevitable "Why would you want that/you'd drown in data!" complaints - it's a choice. Just as sometimes I choose to turn my cellphone off or to not answer my email, I could choose to turn all this stuff off if I wanted to be without it.
There is very little incentive to invent robots that can construct things unsupervised in Minnesota because putting human beings to work in Minnesota is very inexpensive.
There is a great deal of incentive to invent robots that can construct simple structures unsupervised on the moon because putting human beings to work on the moon is a staggeringly expensive proposition. It would not shock me if the expense of inventing the robots, building them and then sending them to the moon were lower than just the expense of a manned mission to the moon (and I'm not including the R&D on making a man-rated ship and building it - just the launch and mission to the moon).
A construction business likely can't absorb the expenses involved in subsidizing the development of robots that may or may not work and may or may not eventually be cheaper to use for their purposes than human beings. NASA not only can absorb the expenses involved in subsidizing the development of robots that may or may not work because they'll almost certainly be much cheaper to use for their purposes, and in fact, as an agency, it should spend money on this kind of thing because it advances their mission and human capabilities. Once NASA has made it work, then businesses will attempt to use the technology, not the other way around.
Sorry, chum - I've tried to be civil with you and tried to actually discuss this with you, but all you've done in response is insult me and make things up and attribute them to me. Please, feel free to imagine you've won the fight then, and make of this post whatever you will.
It's a shame - if you'd just been able to maintain a civil tongue in your head and responding to arguments I actually made rather than pretending I said something else, it could have been interesting. Sorry it couldn't have been more fruitful - at least I tried.
I never said it was OK to have sex on the clock, in the parking lot or otherwise. What I did say was that I simply don't find one single incident of someone getting away with something by dint of their minority status to be the end of the world. There is a difference between those two things, but I'm beginning to suspect that you're either not capable of or not interested in that, and would rather just attack arguments you wish I was making.
You completely ignore the whole line of argumentation that it takes time for things to settle down, and instead just reiterate your point that it's not OK to fuck while on the clock, even though I never said it was OK to do so.
Then you call me an asshat and ask me what race you are. Re-read what I wrote and you quoted when you gave your pop quiz and let me know exactly where I said you were one race or gender or another. I *did* say that you're sticking up for white guys on slashdot, and in the context of this particular offshoot of this particular thread, that's exactly what you're doing, but you seem to then leap to the conclusion that only people of a particular race or gender can stick up for other members of their race or gender.
It's interesting. In no way did I attack or insult you in either of my posts, and yet you still feel compelled to react with hostility and a marked lack of civility in your response. I wonder what that says about you and about the points you're attempting to make and defend that you're unable to converse in a civilized fashion, and that you feel compelled to manufacture or misinterpret things I said and then get angry about them.
So you're saying that, in addition to not being able to keep a civil tongue in your mouth, you're also unable to appreciate the absurdity of someone lamenting that a member of three of the most privileged classes in our culture would have possibly been punished for something that a member of three of the least privileged classes in our culture got away with?
I don't disagree that equal rights should be equal, but it takes time for things to even out. You might think that social prejudices can be stopped on a dime and that just by saying "Hey, we're all equal!" people will suddenly somehow stop treating people like shit because they're different, but unlike you, apparently, I understand that it's not something that happens all at once.
Given the staggering amount of prejudice that still exists in our society, given the incredible amount of resistance some people (generally straight, white, males) have to acknowledging that MAYBE some other classes of people don't have all that easy a time of it because they might not themselves be prejudiced, I'd say it's perfectly reasonable for there to be a bit of a backlash before shit settles down. A black gay woman getting away with fucking in her car, on camera, while a white straight male would probably be fired is hardly the end of the world, no? It's not like palefaces are being hung from trees or dragged behind trucks, and I'm sorry, I just don't find some girl getting her freak on inappropriately to be any kind of massive threat to society.
Nobody is saying that protected minorities should be able to do anything they want without punishment, just that, until things settle, it's probably in the best interests of people to stop getting their panties in a bunch because someone else in one isolated incident, got away with something while someone else might not have.
Of course, I'll probably be modded a troll because I dare to acknowledge that white straight males might not, actually, be suffering under their black female lesbian overlords, and you'll probably be modded insightful despite your gratuitous insult because, hey, someone's gotta stick up for the white guys on slashdot!
You can damn well bet if it had been a white, straight male, there would have been an immediate no-questions-needed firing.
You're right - straight white males have it SO MUCH HARDER than black lesbian women!
I can't imagine just how difficult it would have to be to be a straight white male. When you guys got the vote in this country, it was like, "Finally! The straight white male gets a say in things!" And I definitely remember when separate but equal was struck down - I mean, wow, you guys were SO GLAD to get to go to black schools which were vastly superior and much, much more well funded. Heck, I even remember the first time I saw a white guy using one of those deluxe "colored's only" drinking fountains and I could tell he was finally getting to taste what it was like to be black! I think you guys will really be able to say you've made it when one of you gets to be President. Some day! Just bide your time and don't rock the boat, and I'm sure it'll happen. Maybe one of you will be a senator, and perhaps eventually a few of you will be CEOs of large corporations.
For right now, though, it's a black lesbian womens' world, and I guess you'll just have to deal with your second class status.
My financial situation is a bit complicated. Without going into it, I'm not too worried about the long-term growth, not at all worried about losing my primary source of income, and generally am at a place where I feel best being conservative (sorta) with where I put my money. Boosting my rainy day fund by some very fractional amount isn't buying as much psychological bang for the buck as shaving 5 years off my repayment plan, basically.
How do you feel about paying for (and having your kids and grandkids pay for) the irresponsible people that hocked their houses to the hilt during the bubble, and used the inflated equity as an ATM to spend freely? Do you think it's okay that the grasshoppers played all summer while you and the other ants worked and saved for winter, that since winter has come the government is raiding your savings to help the grasshoppers? I mean, where do you think the money is ultimately going to come from?
Those are fair questions.
First, there are efforts being made to make sure that the people who bought WAY too much house or too many houses and then tried to cash in on the expanding bubble to spend like crazy by borrowing against their home equity aren't going to be getting bailed out. While I'm sure that won't be anywhere near 100% successful, it's something that is being considered in the plan, and I'm OK with that kind of effort.
Second, of course I don't *like* the idea of some people who behaved completely irresponsibly being floated on my dime (and my kids and their kids), but on the other hand, I also don't like the idea of what letting the collapse go completely will actually mean for me and mine. I'm a big fan of doing things to promote societal stability, and I think that Great Depression II: Electric Boogaloo would be bad for *everyone* not just the people who behaved irresponsibly.
It's kind of like this: we have social welfare programs in place not just to benefit the poor, but to benefit everyone who doesn't want to see a complete and total social upheaval and mayhem caused by people who have literally nothing to lose. If things go completely sour, it isn't just Joe Houseflipper who gets screwed, it's EVERYONE.
Just as you probably don't suffer from the delusion that you are a completely self-contained economic entity who's wealth is not remotely linked to the well-being of the society you live in, do me the courtesy of assuming that I'm not under the delusion that this is "free money." I know very well where the money is coming from. I don't imagine it's being created out of nothing at no cost to me and mine; I just think the long-term cost to me and my circle will be less if we try to make the landing a soft one rather than letting it just crash full-speed.
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You aren't thinking that through at all.
You say only paranoid people would have an issue. So, I suppose a woman who was treated for a sexual assault and doesn't want everyone on the planet knowing about it would be clinically paranoid to want to opt out? I suppose a man who is HIV+ and doesn't want to broadcast his status for fear of social repercussions is paranoid if he doesn't want to share his records with the world? Are they "clinically paranoid?"
If the data gets stolen (and it will - we can't even keep information on our nuclear weapons programs safe), whoever takes it won't be interested in John Doe's eczema or Jane Doe's bursitis; they'll do a search for the good stuff and use the fact that John Smith is HIV+ or that Jane Smith was raped and terminated the resultant pregnancy, and they'll use that information to blackmail those people.
You also have a rather naive view of the chances that glitches will occur. What happens when the inevitable software glitches occur and people wind up inadvertently hiding things that they don't care to hide or revealing things they want to keep to themselves? What happens when a relevant condition in a patient is accidentally hidden and the doctor prescribes something that mixes poorly with another condition?
It's not paranoia. It may be hard for you to imagine, but there are people in the world who have things they want to keep hidden, and their desire to do so is hardly paranoia - it's extremely sensible.
There are compromises:
What about a system where you have a card with a chip on it that stores all your medical info (locally), but requires your fingerprint be read into a local scanner to decrypt it? That way, if someone stole your purse you wouldn't necessarily lose your privacy, but you'd have a convenient way of carrying the information with you. In case of emergency where you don't have your card, a special request could be put in (and would require your fingerprint to access the data that way as well) and the data could be sent on a specific machine that is secured solely for the purpose of getting this data, rather than through a web browser. No forms to fill out (it's all on your card) but you can also keep your data somewhat secure.
Personally, I loathe the idea of health information being on the web, but not so much for my privacy as for the privacy of people who have medical conditions that have a high social stigma associated with them. I don't care if someone finds out I had pneumonia 2 years ago or mono when I was a teen; someone who is HIV+, who is transgender, or who has been a victim of sexual assault, for example, might have an entirely different take, with stakes quite a bit higher than the typical person.
Who says Satan had a choice in the matter? That's what I mean about tools playing parts without realizing that's what they're doing and it seeming to be their choosing. Basically, what I'm saying is that just because Satan (or Kara Thrace) seemed to behave like he (or she) could make choices and do things of his (or her) own free-will, that may not have been true.
It's a basic philosophical riddle that we all face - it sure *feels* like I have free will, it sure *feels* like I can make choices in what I do, but who's to say that the choices I make are actually choices and not simply pre-programmed actions? Who's to say my angst over making choice a over choice b isn't completely worthless because I don't actually have a choice? I'm simply stipulating that it is possible, in the context of Galactica, that there may be at least 2 categories of beings: those who really don't have any choices and those who really do, and that Kara Thrace may have been one of the ones who had no choice and thus was subject to special rules that don't apply to those who actually have free will.
I can't give you a specific citation on the lack of free-will thing except to say that in virtually every popular culture portrayal of angels I've run across, angels are different from humans in that they have no choice in what they do in the larger scheme of things - they have a destiny and while they might be able to vary a bit in how they fulfill it, they don't have a choice about fulfilling it. For the purposes of a discussion of Galactica, I'd say "popular culture" is a good enough citation. I'm no biblical scholar - and if it not being the case in Judeo-Christian texts that angels have no free will, there certainly are instances of special beings who are pre-programmed to do all kinds of tasks in other cultures - they're under a compulsion, geas, etc. The idea of special rules for special beings is not without precedent.
I'm on my first - I got an Elite when the Micro Center by me ran a sale when the Elite was first introduced. I've had no issues with it at all, though I probably don't use it as much as some, and almost certainly not for as many consecutive hours as some - maybe 12 hours a week, though there was a month when I was ill where I probably played 5-6 hours at a shot every day, and 10+ hours if I had friends over to visit.
Maybe I'm lucky, maybe the Elite version was more solidly constructed, no idea. That's got to be really frustrating having it break - and I do admit to pangs of fear every time I'm bringing home a new game I'm eager to play: will this be the time it breaks? Fortunately those pangs are momentary and totally outweighed by the fun :)
You are making the mistake in thinking that Kara Thrace is the same as everyone else. I don't think she is.
In some mythologies, there are multiple classes of beings besides just god and people. You have angels, demons, spirits, and any other number of creatures that have special treatment. For example, in Judeo-Christian mythology, Angels are special creatures that can do all kinds of things and yet they don't really have free will - that's reserved for humans.
So, in Galactica, I thought they did a pretty good idea of making it clear that Kara Thrace isn't like "people" - she's something else. God can manipulate her in any number of ways that it might not be able to manipulate "real" people. Kara was a tool to accomplish something - it just happens that she didn't know what she was, and happened to have a more complex inner life than other tools. At least, that's what makes sense to me - it lets miraculous things like Kara's return happen, but doesn't invalidate the other characters.
And I agree - Moore making shit up kinda wrecks it, but I think it's actually pretty entertaining to try and figure out how to account for the inconsistencies. I'm not remotely religious, but I enjoyed it as entertainment.
Who says the Galactica "God" is all powerful and all knowing?
Jehovah in the Old Testament is hardly all-knowing (he screws up and has to restart civilization with the flood, in the garden of Eden he's caught by surprise at one point, etc.)
In virtually every other religion, gods are simply much more advanced people and hardly omniscient or omnipotent - the Greek and Roman gods especially so, and I dare say that Galactica takes as much of its godstuff from those traditions as from the Judeo-Christian ones. There might have been a few nods to the Norse mythos if I remember right, and certainly those gods were ANYTHING but omniscient and omnipotent - really just jumped up mortals.
As to motivation and why Galactica god would nave "needed" or "wanted" to have the characters act like that - the point was made on the show that it is impossible to understand god in terms of human motivations; god isn't good or evil, god is a force of nature. If you want some more traditional explanations, look again at the Judeo-Christian mythos: God sends his only begotten son down to Earth to suffer for our sins, god messes with Job's head to prove his faith, god does all kinds of really crazy stuff that makes absolutely no sense unless you say something along the lines of "it makes sense to god."
As to why Galactica-God would have made certain people behave the way they did, first, who's to say that they were people, strictly speaking? The characters who were manipulated may not have had any choice in what ultimately happened to them (the greek concept of destiny here - you'll wind up in spot Z, which is very vaguely defined, but how you actually get there and what it means when that happens is up to you), or they might not have had ANY free will at all and been simply scripted bots for the other characters to interact with. Why would Galactica-God do this? The answer, in this case, I suspect is the same as why any teacher or parent puts trials in front of their students or children - to teach them. Why did my teacher back in 2nd grade make me solve arithmetic problems when she had could do it herself? Why did she make me solve them on paper instead of letting me use a calculator? Why have me read excerpts from various readings and explain them when they'd already been explained and there would likely be absolutely nothing new that a 7 year-old could add to that? To teach me and help me grow. Within the context of Galactica, the god there wants the characters to grow and develop and learn, it seems to me - they have to make choices, solve problems, become more true to who they are, and one way of doing that is to set up situations where they have the possibility to do that.
Or, on yet another level, what motivation do I have for launching Civ 4 and trying to conquer the world? What motivation do I have for logging into World of Warcraft and having my character beat the crap out of other characters? What motivation do I have for creating a universe for my friends to go tromping through when I run Mutants and Masterminds for them? The answer is: it amuses me to do so. In the context of Galactica, god:colonials::me:Civ4 nation I control - the rudimentary AI in the game wouldn't be able to remotely comprehend what I'm doing on any level (and yes, I know, the AI in the game is not actually self-aware or anything - which is my point: god in Galactica is operating on a vastly different level than the characters)
I suspect your problem with the god stuff in Galactica comes more from the conflict between what you imagine a god to be and what the writers of the show had Galactica-God be - you're attributing things to that god that just weren't attributed or were more metaphorical than literal. And, in fact, if they had made a point that god was literally *all* powerful and *all* knowing and infinite, then yes, as a story it would be entirely pointless.
Personally, I'm as non-theistic as anyone, and while I know what you mean about the idea of god being a cop out, in this case I absolutely disagree with you. I
An Apple customer service true story:
I wound up cracking the screen of my iPhone (I fell down a flight and a half of rain-slick stairs). Unfortunately, AppleCare (which I didn't buy for it) doesn't cover damages to the phone's screen, so I was dreading the cost of getting it repaired. It still worked, mind you - it was just ugly because the crack was all over, and so while I could still use the touch screen, I couldn't easily read stuff on it. On top of that, I had unlocked it - canceled service with AT&T because it's crap in my area, and I have t-mobile on it, so I didn't know if they'd even be willing to repair the thing. So - strikes against me: my fault it broke, water damage (rainy!), no AppleCare, unlocked and on an unauthorized carrier...
I went to the Genius Bar and they replaced it. For free - usually it's a $250 fee, but they waived it for me for some reason.
A second one, just because:
The HDD in my MacBook died (though I didn't know it was the HDD, I couldn't figure out what was wrong - it just wouldn't boot up and I didn't feel like fucking with it). Took it into the apple store on my lunch break to get it looked at. I didn't have applecare for the macbook, but they diagnosed it for me for free. Guy tells me he'll take it in back and fix it in a jiff. Comes back in 10 minutes and gives it to me along with the service quote which was $100 (for the new HDD). "Oh, yeah, also, your battery was kinda old and there were some problems with those so I put in a new one for you and here's a better power cord since yours is kinda twisted." Free. Also gave me the old HDD to dispose of since I asked for it.
(Also, just want to say: Time Machine freaking rocks! I was 100% back up and running within an hour, with everything exactly as it was before my HDD died)
Speaking as someone who (unfortunately) has a T61 at work, I can also say the T61 is a steaming pile of shit.
It can't handle on-close sleeping well: if I close the lid, I know that when I open it back up it'll take something like 30 minutes before performance will go back to normal (the processor and HD seem to thrash a lot - I don't know what this is) Considering that it is a laptop, which means it is portable, which means people will want to move it around, which probably means closing the lid frequently, this is a rather huge problem. My MacBook (not even a pro) is the only laptop I've ever found that handles sleep elegantly - why is making "go to sleep when I close the lid, wake up when I open it, and preferably inside of 5-10 seconds" so freaking difficult for anyone but Apple to manage? Is it that Windows can't handle sleep well? Is it a hardware issue? This BAFFLES me.
The built-in wireless is shit - it seems to randomly shut itself off (need to press the blue button on the keyboard to get it back on, which doesn't always work), and the software that takes over the management of wireless connections from windows is even less intuitive and useable than the Windows wireless manager. I'm a reasonably bright person, but it took me a freaking HOUR to figure out how to get it to connect to a wireless connection that doesn't broadcast the ID. Oh, and it COULDN'T REMEMBER THE FREAKING NETWORK, so every time I wanted to reconnect, I had to go through a long process of setting it back up. On my MacBook, it's a simple matter of clicking on the wireless icon, clicking on "join other network" and typing the network name - box pops up for authentication, and I'm in, and it REMEMBERS THE FREAKING CONNECTION without me having to remind it or do anything.
Given that I use my laptop for work, and given that my time costs money, I'm more than happy to spend a little extra (maybe 5 hours worth of my time) to have a tool that does what I need it to do, when I need it to do it, how I need it to be done, and without making it incredibly annoying.
It has better specs than my MacBook, and yet my MacBook is able to effortlessly run both OS X and Windows XP (in Parallels) simultaneously, while the T61 sort of shits itself if I try to launch SPSS and Firefox at the same time. I wound up wiping the t61 and giving it to one of my interns for data entry.
The "Hurr, if they don't listen then let them die!" response that you had is pretty common, unfortunately.
As I said, not everyone learns the same way, and certain people with certain personality traits tend to behave more impulsively when under conditions of extreme arousal (or, unfortunately, often duress) than others. You might be perfectly willing to write those people off, but fortunately, other people aren't misanthropic idiots and actually understand that spending some efforts trying to figure out how to teach people with different learning needs important lessons can pay massive dividends that far outweigh the cost of the research being done.
We've recently expanded our research program and have been trying to hire recent graduates to work as basic research assistants/project co-ordinators (they'd be doing basic tasks like helping to figure out what measures we want to use in projects, working with senior researchers to learn how to handle data management tasks, supervising interns, that kind of thing). The position is pretty good - 30k a year, 60 paid days off a year, good health and dental insurance for $10 a month, 401k/retirement matching and a pension, 100% tuition reimbursement, etc. There are massive professional development opportunities (credit on publications, presentations, opportunities to network) and it essentially guarantees that anyone who does it well will get into their graduate program of choice. Basically, if you're taking a year off between undergraduate and grad school, this is the place to do it.
The applicants are about 50/50. One half of them is comprised of people who are genuinely interested in the field, want to do this as a bridge between undergrad and grad because they feel maybe they didn't get enough internship time, maybe they didn't have perfect grades or 99th percentile GREs, or maybe they want a break from school and a chance to get some pratical research experience. The other half is comprised of little shits who have an epic sense of entitlement and think that just because they managed to sit still for 4 years (or, usually, 5 or 6) they're special in some way.
One recent applicant I interviewed came in and pretty much the first thing out of his mouth was, "What can you do for me?" Another told me she wouldn't take less than $40,000 for the job, despite the fact that it was only 10 minutes into the first interview and she wasn't even qualified for the position. Since I work at a university, I've taken the opportunity to educate these kids, and I let them know during the interviews (which were rather truncated) that we weren't interested.
But, then, when I was interviewing people for positions in the corporate world, about half the time I'd get great applicants, with the rest being clueless idiots who thought that since they knew how to turn a computer on they were entitled to 6-figure salaries. I don't think it's so much a "narcissistic graduates" problem as a "narcissistic people" problem. It's always been amazing to me how completely oblivious to how they come off these people are, but I guess that's why it's a personality disorder, eh?
I'm part of a team doing research into the area of HIV/AIDS education and prevention by developing better intervention methods. What we've found is that the people who were most likely to engage in unsafe behaviors were also the least likely to benefit from traditional educational interventions. Some people have personality traits that seem to interfere a great deal with long-term self-protective behaviors when faced with the prospect of short-term pleasure.
One of the things we're trying is to recreate (as best we can through imagery and visualization) a sexually-charged atmosphere for individuals while we teach them about safe-sex - video games and movies and the like via the web - but we add in questions throughout, and let the participant choose what they do. We're a long way from done with the studies, but some of the early responses are encouraging.
Of course, for our study it's working with individuals who do know the facts about HIV/AIDS but simply don't find themselves able to focus on safer-sex when the time is at hand to use that knowledge, which is rather different than the situation with most high-risk Africans (who may not have the knowledge, or may not have condoms, or may have massive cultural indoctrination to overcome, or who may not be having sex by choice, or who may be married to someone cheating on them, etc.) The point is, many approaches are needed because not all people learn the same.
So cool, make some video games, do whatever you can and see what works.
He specifically mentioned shocking people, and in fact referenced the Stanford experiments while doing so. I understand what the original reference was to, but the one to which I was replying isn't it.
I've seen footage from the Milgrom experiment, which is what you're referring to.
It isn't about people being "given permission to be sadistic" - it was about people caving into authority figures when told to do something that they didn't agree with. The vast majority of the people who were being told to give extreme shocks were actually arguing with the researcher and refusing several times to keep going, but eventually they gave in. Far from being sadistic (taking pleasure in inflicting pain), the participants were nearly hysterical in several instances, begging to not be made to continue shocking a person they thought was seriously hurt or dying, and in several cases nearly physically assaulted the researcher, or threatened violence.
What it demonstrated was that most people, when they are confronted with an authority figure telling them to do something they know is wrong but that they've already kind of done anyway, will eventually give in and do the wrong thing.
This isn't really relevant to the thread, but it irks me that the experiment was so incredibly poorly represented in your post as something that it absolutely wasn't.
I disagree absolutely.
You have a police officer who thinks it's funny to joke about being corrupt and is dumb enough to do so publicly - he's a public servant and absolutely should be held to a very high standard, ESPECIALLY when it comes to spouting off stupid things that make his organization look bad.
I work for a university (and, by extension, am a state employee since it's a state school) as a researcher and instructor, and I would be fired in a heartbeat if I were so stupid as to put something up, under my own name, where our research participants could see it, that was similar. "Offline, reading 'Red Dragon' to learn how to convince the mentally ill to cut off their own faces."
This is enough to throw into question the validity of his work. Maybe next time he'll think twice before joking around about abusing the public trust.
There are ways to deal with this kind of thing and to make the game a bit more interesting at the same time. Make it so that players can do quests to get keys that will poof them directly into an instance so they don't have to hang out in front - like attunement but that actually gives you a benefit beyond just letting you inside.
For quests in general, make more instanced versions of quests. I *really* hate having to wait for one mob that's on a 5 minute timer that is being camped by 100 other players looking to do that same quest. Yes, I *could* group up with some of those players, but that's still 20ish groups and the hassle of trying to get a team for something you don't need a team for. So, just have the house/hut/yurt where Goblin Leader Guy spawns be a tiny instance - you run to it, go in, kill the guy and get out.
Additionally, supplement the standard quests with grinding quests. If a player just wants to grind, rather than forcing them to grind in a place where people who want to go for quests are, give them something like a bulletin board - "There are a bunch of bears that have taken over this cave/campsite/graveyard! Go wipe 'em out! (Pays X gold, Y xp)" Yes, people would still grind on mobs outside of these quests, but it would make it possible to avoid overcrowding if you wanted to.
I would *love* to see WoW turned into 4 servers instead of however many they have right now. Rp+PVE, Normal PVE, Rp+PVP, Normal PVP. Maybe 1 other - a "hardcore" server (you die, that's it) with a ladder, ala Diablo II.
The only summary one needs for Nemesis is "Bad remake of Wrath of Khan."
Many not-for-profit businesses could benefit from this kind of thing. I used to volunteer at several and there was always a need for things like thumb drives and external hard drives.
The first of the new paradigms should be "you can customize it to your liking." I have a Kindle, which I absolutely love, but I would change a couple of the buttons around and actually disable one if I could - I should be able to configure them how I want them, but I can't. I also have a couple of video game consoles and would love to be able to set the control configurations up for all my shooter-type games to work the same way. Jump should (for me) always be in a certain spot, same for shooting, etc. It's all software now and I don't know why they don't let me do this kind of thing.
The second of the new paradigms is the way information is presented. I want to be able to have more ubiquitous information displays - let me have a small HUD that gets projected onto my glasses that shows certain bits of data that I choose (kind of like the Dashboard in OS X) and arrayed in a way I like. Also make displays context sensitive - when I'm indoors, say at my office, have my display use an RFID chip or something to know that I'm at the office and configure my display to office tasks (email, internal IM, calendar, etc.) vs. when I'm outdoors and might want something else like temperature/weather/time, bus schedule, an arrow showing the route I need to take to get where I'm going, map, whatever I want). Basically augmented reality. I could have as much or as little info displayed as I wanted.
I dream of things like having a device capable of doing facial recognition and giving me a little info (public profile) on people I meet (and only if they are willing to share that/allow it to be accessed) or that could listen to music around me and let me know the artist/song, or that I could look at a bar-code and blink (or something) and it'd give me info on that, or could test the air and tell me what I'm smelling, etc.
For the inevitable "Why would you want that/you'd drown in data!" complaints - it's a choice. Just as sometimes I choose to turn my cellphone off or to not answer my email, I could choose to turn all this stuff off if I wanted to be without it.
There is very little incentive to invent robots that can construct things unsupervised in Minnesota because putting human beings to work in Minnesota is very inexpensive.
There is a great deal of incentive to invent robots that can construct simple structures unsupervised on the moon because putting human beings to work on the moon is a staggeringly expensive proposition. It would not shock me if the expense of inventing the robots, building them and then sending them to the moon were lower than just the expense of a manned mission to the moon (and I'm not including the R&D on making a man-rated ship and building it - just the launch and mission to the moon).
A construction business likely can't absorb the expenses involved in subsidizing the development of robots that may or may not work and may or may not eventually be cheaper to use for their purposes than human beings. NASA not only can absorb the expenses involved in subsidizing the development of robots that may or may not work because they'll almost certainly be much cheaper to use for their purposes, and in fact, as an agency, it should spend money on this kind of thing because it advances their mission and human capabilities. Once NASA has made it work, then businesses will attempt to use the technology, not the other way around.
Ah, I see. You want a fight, not a discussion.
Sorry, chum - I've tried to be civil with you and tried to actually discuss this with you, but all you've done in response is insult me and make things up and attribute them to me. Please, feel free to imagine you've won the fight then, and make of this post whatever you will.
It's a shame - if you'd just been able to maintain a civil tongue in your head and responding to arguments I actually made rather than pretending I said something else, it could have been interesting. Sorry it couldn't have been more fruitful - at least I tried.
I never said it was OK to have sex on the clock, in the parking lot or otherwise. What I did say was that I simply don't find one single incident of someone getting away with something by dint of their minority status to be the end of the world. There is a difference between those two things, but I'm beginning to suspect that you're either not capable of or not interested in that, and would rather just attack arguments you wish I was making.
You completely ignore the whole line of argumentation that it takes time for things to settle down, and instead just reiterate your point that it's not OK to fuck while on the clock, even though I never said it was OK to do so.
Then you call me an asshat and ask me what race you are. Re-read what I wrote and you quoted when you gave your pop quiz and let me know exactly where I said you were one race or gender or another. I *did* say that you're sticking up for white guys on slashdot, and in the context of this particular offshoot of this particular thread, that's exactly what you're doing, but you seem to then leap to the conclusion that only people of a particular race or gender can stick up for other members of their race or gender.
It's interesting. In no way did I attack or insult you in either of my posts, and yet you still feel compelled to react with hostility and a marked lack of civility in your response. I wonder what that says about you and about the points you're attempting to make and defend that you're unable to converse in a civilized fashion, and that you feel compelled to manufacture or misinterpret things I said and then get angry about them.
So you're saying that, in addition to not being able to keep a civil tongue in your mouth, you're also unable to appreciate the absurdity of someone lamenting that a member of three of the most privileged classes in our culture would have possibly been punished for something that a member of three of the least privileged classes in our culture got away with?
I don't disagree that equal rights should be equal, but it takes time for things to even out. You might think that social prejudices can be stopped on a dime and that just by saying "Hey, we're all equal!" people will suddenly somehow stop treating people like shit because they're different, but unlike you, apparently, I understand that it's not something that happens all at once.
Given the staggering amount of prejudice that still exists in our society, given the incredible amount of resistance some people (generally straight, white, males) have to acknowledging that MAYBE some other classes of people don't have all that easy a time of it because they might not themselves be prejudiced, I'd say it's perfectly reasonable for there to be a bit of a backlash before shit settles down. A black gay woman getting away with fucking in her car, on camera, while a white straight male would probably be fired is hardly the end of the world, no? It's not like palefaces are being hung from trees or dragged behind trucks, and I'm sorry, I just don't find some girl getting her freak on inappropriately to be any kind of massive threat to society.
Nobody is saying that protected minorities should be able to do anything they want without punishment, just that, until things settle, it's probably in the best interests of people to stop getting their panties in a bunch because someone else in one isolated incident, got away with something while someone else might not have.
Of course, I'll probably be modded a troll because I dare to acknowledge that white straight males might not, actually, be suffering under their black female lesbian overlords, and you'll probably be modded insightful despite your gratuitous insult because, hey, someone's gotta stick up for the white guys on slashdot!
You can damn well bet if it had been a white, straight male, there would have been an immediate no-questions-needed firing.
You're right - straight white males have it SO MUCH HARDER than black lesbian women!
I can't imagine just how difficult it would have to be to be a straight white male. When you guys got the vote in this country, it was like, "Finally! The straight white male gets a say in things!" And I definitely remember when separate but equal was struck down - I mean, wow, you guys were SO GLAD to get to go to black schools which were vastly superior and much, much more well funded. Heck, I even remember the first time I saw a white guy using one of those deluxe "colored's only" drinking fountains and I could tell he was finally getting to taste what it was like to be black! I think you guys will really be able to say you've made it when one of you gets to be President. Some day! Just bide your time and don't rock the boat, and I'm sure it'll happen. Maybe one of you will be a senator, and perhaps eventually a few of you will be CEOs of large corporations.
For right now, though, it's a black lesbian womens' world, and I guess you'll just have to deal with your second class status.
My financial situation is a bit complicated. Without going into it, I'm not too worried about the long-term growth, not at all worried about losing my primary source of income, and generally am at a place where I feel best being conservative (sorta) with where I put my money. Boosting my rainy day fund by some very fractional amount isn't buying as much psychological bang for the buck as shaving 5 years off my repayment plan, basically.
How do you feel about paying for (and having your kids and grandkids pay for) the irresponsible people that hocked their houses to the hilt during the bubble, and used the inflated equity as an ATM to spend freely? Do you think it's okay that the grasshoppers played all summer while you and the other ants worked and saved for winter, that since winter has come the government is raiding your savings to help the grasshoppers? I mean, where do you think the money is ultimately going to come from?
Those are fair questions.
First, there are efforts being made to make sure that the people who bought WAY too much house or too many houses and then tried to cash in on the expanding bubble to spend like crazy by borrowing against their home equity aren't going to be getting bailed out. While I'm sure that won't be anywhere near 100% successful, it's something that is being considered in the plan, and I'm OK with that kind of effort.
Second, of course I don't *like* the idea of some people who behaved completely irresponsibly being floated on my dime (and my kids and their kids), but on the other hand, I also don't like the idea of what letting the collapse go completely will actually mean for me and mine. I'm a big fan of doing things to promote societal stability, and I think that Great Depression II: Electric Boogaloo would be bad for *everyone* not just the people who behaved irresponsibly.
It's kind of like this: we have social welfare programs in place not just to benefit the poor, but to benefit everyone who doesn't want to see a complete and total social upheaval and mayhem caused by people who have literally nothing to lose. If things go completely sour, it isn't just Joe Houseflipper who gets screwed, it's EVERYONE.
Just as you probably don't suffer from the delusion that you are a completely self-contained economic entity who's wealth is not remotely linked to the well-being of the society you live in, do me the courtesy of assuming that I'm not under the delusion that this is "free money." I know very well where the money is coming from. I don't imagine it's being created out of nothing at no cost to me and mine; I just think the long-term cost to me and my circle will be less if we try to make the landing a soft one rather than letting it just crash full-speed.