There's an article on Salon (not exactly an unbiased source, I know) about Kerik; apparently he had a lot of "dirty laundry", and this was likely just an excuse to avoid what could have been a very embarassing media focus on the new cabinet member had he actually been appointed.
Generally, the more educated the population is, the lower the birth rate. Education is associated with things like middle-class status and improvements of the position/rights of women (in most societies, I'm sure you could provide some counterexamples, especially in highly-religious societies). I thought it was interesting that a study referenced in the New York Times found that birth rates in the US were significantly higher in the "red states", with Kerry winning something like 10 of the 11 states with the lowest birth rates.
In Africa, European colonization led to rapid changes in medicine and agriculture that led not so much to spiking birth rates, but rather a decline in infant mortality rates (and death rates in general). These changes took place faster than the ability of society and its mores (which tend to change more slowly) to adapt. Thus the cultural values which encouraged maximum births (need to have lots of kids in order for sufficient numbers to survive to care for you in old age) did not keep up, and Africa's population exploded.
Not surprisingly, women are in a very disadvantaged position in many African nations. In some places on the continent, there is a potent folk legend that says that having sex with a virgin can cure AIDS. In others, female genital mutilation is practiced. Few African males will willingly utilize condoms, although this may be starting to show some improvement through education efforts (I haven't seen data on it). Finally, since many African states are plagued by nearly-constant wars and ethnic conflict (spurred in part by the arbitrary borders established by Europeans in the age of colonization), women are frequently subjected to rape and violence (since the folks with the guns are almost always men).
Settlers is a great game; I've converted most of our circle of friends to it and we've played about 10 matches total (most with the 5-6 player expansion). Almost all of the games have been balanced and tight until the very end.
There's a java version with AI bots at http://settlers.cs.northwestern.edu/. Although sometimes the servers get clogged and you cannot get on, there's also a mirror linked at that site.
I just got a 1GB SanDisk flash player for my wife for Xmas. The thing is tiny (smaller than an Ipod mini) and has a ton of features, including a backlit display. It was slightly under $200 (the 512mb was on sale for $132, but I wanted the extra capacity), and it promises 15 hours on a single AAA battery. I could have gotten the new Dell mini-player (5GB) for only $10 more, but she wants to use it mostly for running and aerobics.
Certainly there are many Apple fans who will buy anything with their logo, but won't many of these folks already have Ipods? And for new customers, there will be a lot of other products (even some good ones, from the reviews I've read) that Apple will have to compete with. Of course, they already have the advantage of name-recognition, so who knows, maybe it'll do well.
Nah, 'cause guns have all kinds of legal uses, such as opening soda cans, turning off the TV, repelling rabid cougars, and shooting deer to put food on your family's dinner table. Totally different topics, sheesh.
Seems some shows ARE making it to DVD faster. Blockbuster doesn't always carry television series, but NetFlix, I understand, does a brisk business on DVD sets. Probably the only thing preventing an instant turnaround is the desire to make more money on syndication deals.
Although... they could probably do a good double-punch by selling single episodes right after the show is aired, and then selling it again a year later in a boxed set with extras. Maybe a third sale even later with a "director's cut" of the show, which includes a bit of collectable memorabilia.
My TV viewing has already dropped to nearly nothing. I spend most of my free evening time playing computer games and reading. My wife does watch some television, but she records shows to watch while running on the treadmill.
If the Broadcast flag ends up doing what others say it will do (i.e. restrict your ability to timeshift and skip commercials), I'll likely stop watching broadcast television altogether. The few shows we enjoy a lot, we'll get the DVD boxed sets. For us it's not really about the money, but the time wasted by playing the networks' games in order to watch a simple show.
I agree with the parent; the Sacramento News and Review did a story on our local traffic camera system and it turns out that the police were simply reading from the contractor's manual when testifying at hearings, and judges were pressured by city officials not to allow challenges to the red-light system because of the significance it had for city revenues. One of the "victims" of this system challenged it, and on appeal dozens of tickets were thrown out because of faulty maintenance records and flaws in the judicial process.
Re:Welcome to capitalism
on
HIV Vaccine
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Others have already commented on the fallacy that private R&D drives new drugs, so I won't repeat that point. What gets me is that drug marketing is so ubiquitous now (and is several times what companies invest in R&D, as others in the sub-thread note). Some programs will have 4-5 drug commercials in a row (depending on the target demographic of the audience). I remember one for "the purple pill" where the ad didn't even mention what the pill's name was or say what the medication is for (later found out it was Nexium, for heartburn IIRC).
Patients shouldn't be asking doctors for specific drugs, IMO. Drug advertising should be regulated/restricted in the same way that liquor ads are. After VIOXX, I don't trust any of them, not that I was rushing to the doctor's office seeking these "life-enhancing" medicines before.
Steam is an early version of digital distribution; there are bound to be problems. I DLed the game on the release day, and when I couldn't play due to the overloaded servers, I was pissed, I admit. But on Day 2 I got on without difficulty and haven't had a problem since.
I hope that Valve learns from their mistakes and that other publishers take up this model of distribution. Publishers just get in the way, IMHO.
Well, there's no shortage of supplements for 3.0 (and now 3.5) edition D&D. In fact, with the Open Gaming License approach, there's a lot more supplements from tons of small publishers, both books and digital files. Personally I don't buy tons of supplements (I own the core books and a few of the Forgotten Realms supplements, and that's it), but 3.0/3.5 scales up in complexity and detail if you want it to. I think where it eclipses 2.0 is the basic simplicity of the underlying rule system (although a few needlessly complex artifacts, like the grappling system, remain).
I totally agree that a lot of these games shouldn't be in the hands of minors. Grand Theft, Manhunt, maybe even some of the most grisly shooters.
But as other posters have noted, even if most stores honor their ratings code and don't sell, the kids will still get these games if they are available. Children are canny consumers. I remember as a kid growing up, most young people of my peer group knew the places where you could buy cigarettes and alcohol, for example. And with the Internet there are other ways to get ahold of a game, making it even easier to get the content.
So ultimately, you can't really "save" a kid from being exposed to this sort of media. So the ones who affect how they deal with that exposure are the parents. If they are actively involved in their child's life, they are the ones who can be at least generally aware of what they are doing on their computers or console games. Of course, parents cannot protect their children 100%, since the kids can always go over to a friend's house to play, but they can inculcate in the child the values needed for a child to place the violence in his/her surrounding culture into the proper context.
Unfortunately, these days many (not all) parents are dodging these responsibilities, and leave the media to raise their kids (television, video games, the Internet, peer groups). Then they bitch when they come home and see their kid playing GTA. In this context, the easiest solution from their point of view is to ban/regulate the content.
You can't put the genie back into the bottle. Porn, violence, a whole slew of sick shit... it's out there, and it ain't going away no matter how much the radical right shrieks and moans. People want this content, and not just the depraved liberals and scrubby proletarians.
I thought it was ironic that there was a piece in my local paper last week juxtaposing the triumph of "values/morals" in the recent election with the popularity of trash TV. The conservatives get all bent out of shape when a naked woman embraces a football player on TV, and yet ratings show that the smutty dramas and vapid reality shows are being watched eagerly by these same people who voted the "moral" ticket. Hypocrites.
Right, given the limited belt that could handle earth-type worlds, that would have to be pretty crowded. I'm running a Neverwinter Nights campaign based on the Firefly verse (it's a total conversion done by another player, search for "Firefly" at Neverwinter Vault), and we're using a model based on a cluster of relatively closely situated stars. A number of folks have done a detailed review of the episodes, and found that there are roughly 30 or so worlds that are specifically referenced that support colonies. That would be tough to fit around a single star.
Plus the whole distinction between core and frontier worlds works better if you have multiple star systems, IMHO.
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Wow. I thought I was cynical when it came to corporate America and the U.S. government, but sir, I bow before a true master.
There's an article on Salon (not exactly an unbiased source, I know) about Kerik; apparently he had a lot of "dirty laundry", and this was likely just an excuse to avoid what could have been a very embarassing media focus on the new cabinet member had he actually been appointed.
In Africa, European colonization led to rapid changes in medicine and agriculture that led not so much to spiking birth rates, but rather a decline in infant mortality rates (and death rates in general). These changes took place faster than the ability of society and its mores (which tend to change more slowly) to adapt. Thus the cultural values which encouraged maximum births (need to have lots of kids in order for sufficient numbers to survive to care for you in old age) did not keep up, and Africa's population exploded.
Not surprisingly, women are in a very disadvantaged position in many African nations. In some places on the continent, there is a potent folk legend that says that having sex with a virgin can cure AIDS. In others, female genital mutilation is practiced. Few African males will willingly utilize condoms, although this may be starting to show some improvement through education efforts (I haven't seen data on it). Finally, since many African states are plagued by nearly-constant wars and ethnic conflict (spurred in part by the arbitrary borders established by Europeans in the age of colonization), women are frequently subjected to rape and violence (since the folks with the guns are almost always men).
There's a java version with AI bots at http://settlers.cs.northwestern.edu/. Although sometimes the servers get clogged and you cannot get on, there's also a mirror linked at that site.
Certainly there are many Apple fans who will buy anything with their logo, but won't many of these folks already have Ipods? And for new customers, there will be a lot of other products (even some good ones, from the reviews I've read) that Apple will have to compete with. Of course, they already have the advantage of name-recognition, so who knows, maybe it'll do well.
Nah, 'cause guns have all kinds of legal uses, such as opening soda cans, turning off the TV, repelling rabid cougars, and shooting deer to put food on your family's dinner table. Totally different topics, sheesh.
Although... they could probably do a good double-punch by selling single episodes right after the show is aired, and then selling it again a year later in a boxed set with extras. Maybe a third sale even later with a "director's cut" of the show, which includes a bit of collectable memorabilia.
If the Broadcast flag ends up doing what others say it will do (i.e. restrict your ability to timeshift and skip commercials), I'll likely stop watching broadcast television altogether. The few shows we enjoy a lot, we'll get the DVD boxed sets. For us it's not really about the money, but the time wasted by playing the networks' games in order to watch a simple show.
I agree with the parent; the Sacramento News and Review did a story on our local traffic camera system and it turns out that the police were simply reading from the contractor's manual when testifying at hearings, and judges were pressured by city officials not to allow challenges to the red-light system because of the significance it had for city revenues. One of the "victims" of this system challenged it, and on appeal dozens of tickets were thrown out because of faulty maintenance records and flaws in the judicial process.
Patients shouldn't be asking doctors for specific drugs, IMO. Drug advertising should be regulated/restricted in the same way that liquor ads are. After VIOXX, I don't trust any of them, not that I was rushing to the doctor's office seeking these "life-enhancing" medicines before.
Steam is an early version of digital distribution; there are bound to be problems. I DLed the game on the release day, and when I couldn't play due to the overloaded servers, I was pissed, I admit. But on Day 2 I got on without difficulty and haven't had a problem since. I hope that Valve learns from their mistakes and that other publishers take up this model of distribution. Publishers just get in the way, IMHO.
Well, there's no shortage of supplements for 3.0 (and now 3.5) edition D&D. In fact, with the Open Gaming License approach, there's a lot more supplements from tons of small publishers, both books and digital files. Personally I don't buy tons of supplements (I own the core books and a few of the Forgotten Realms supplements, and that's it), but 3.0/3.5 scales up in complexity and detail if you want it to. I think where it eclipses 2.0 is the basic simplicity of the underlying rule system (although a few needlessly complex artifacts, like the grappling system, remain).
As someone once said: I don't have any problem with God. It's his fan club that worries me.
But as other posters have noted, even if most stores honor their ratings code and don't sell, the kids will still get these games if they are available. Children are canny consumers. I remember as a kid growing up, most young people of my peer group knew the places where you could buy cigarettes and alcohol, for example. And with the Internet there are other ways to get ahold of a game, making it even easier to get the content.
So ultimately, you can't really "save" a kid from being exposed to this sort of media. So the ones who affect how they deal with that exposure are the parents. If they are actively involved in their child's life, they are the ones who can be at least generally aware of what they are doing on their computers or console games. Of course, parents cannot protect their children 100%, since the kids can always go over to a friend's house to play, but they can inculcate in the child the values needed for a child to place the violence in his/her surrounding culture into the proper context.
Unfortunately, these days many (not all) parents are dodging these responsibilities, and leave the media to raise their kids (television, video games, the Internet, peer groups). Then they bitch when they come home and see their kid playing GTA. In this context, the easiest solution from their point of view is to ban/regulate the content.
You can't put the genie back into the bottle. Porn, violence, a whole slew of sick shit... it's out there, and it ain't going away no matter how much the radical right shrieks and moans. People want this content, and not just the depraved liberals and scrubby proletarians.
I thought it was ironic that there was a piece in my local paper last week juxtaposing the triumph of "values/morals" in the recent election with the popularity of trash TV. The conservatives get all bent out of shape when a naked woman embraces a football player on TV, and yet ratings show that the smutty dramas and vapid reality shows are being watched eagerly by these same people who voted the "moral" ticket. Hypocrites.
Plus the whole distinction between core and frontier worlds works better if you have multiple star systems, IMHO.