Well, in defense of the general idea, the point of killing more people in a shorter amount of time is generally to keep them from killing you first. In this context the lives which the war was intended to protect are protected more effectively by better technology.
Right. When the gatling gun was invented, air warfare WAS obsolete. The combat uses of a tethered baloon run on hot air with a suspended wicker basket were and are rather limited.
Or perhaps you should actually READ the statement you're quoting, eh?
You can, however, defend against a high-powered laser by blowing reflective chaff into the region and confusing the targetting system... just like any other countermeasure. Better targetting system? Make cleverer decoys.
But yeah, once we get past that wee problem, a laser's nice to have with the whole 'hits the target at the speed of light, negating the need for extensive and faulty ballistics calculations' thing.
Hey, I can fully support a policy of "If you're going to kill someone, stop jacking around and kill them". The whole "incapacitate people so that they wander off to die of starvation and a twisted ankle in a ditch" thing just seems rather sloppy.
In all honesty, I think people not requiring thsi dehumanization nonsense is actually kind of a credit to the race in general. If someone can decide that killing someone is the right thing to do, and then do it, the killing is much more likely to be the correct action than if they are unsure and use a psychological trick to force themselves to kill someone.
On the other hand, recall that murder requires a motive, which generally involves being at least partially familiar with the intended victim.
Nah, a true cynic knows the difference: a Deist is an idiot that belives god exists and has the guts to acknowledge outright that he really has no evidence one way or another. An atheist is an idiot who believes god doesn't exist, but refuses to acknowledge the fact that he has no evidence one way or another. I'm still not entirely sure why atheists particularly think that they are superior...
Newton's laws aren't actually wrong. They are entirely correct within the frame of reference and resolution of the measurement devices through the beginning of the last century. In fact, one of the first big tests of quantum mechanics was that it had to collapse into newtonian mechanics at the correct scale.
I guess I agree with the spirit of your post, though.
You're either full of shit or an arts major to have so little understanding of what peer review is or how it works. And your hypothesis about discoveries contradicting established findings is almost exactly the reverse of the actual situation. While you're certainly welcome to voice you're opinion, don't expect to garner any respect doing it when you obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
Maybe they could tie it in with the soda adds? "Buy a coke, or you'll parch, on the 17th of March." Hm... yeah, still not very good. Too many syllables in "seventeen".
I'm a fan of Equilibrium, personally. It's about like the Matrix, but the heavy hand with the symbolism bat comes across as funny instead of painfully pretentious, somehow. Also, it had 'gun kata' which reduced me to helpless laughter for over 1/3 of the movie. I had to keep pausing and rewinding so i wouldn't miss parts.
The problem is that you are measuring depth in terms of the web of literary reference, and some of us are measuring depth in terms of the web of meaning created by the tale itself, i.e. the quality of the story. The the former context, sure, signs was deep. In the latter, sorry, no go. Not that (to give credit where it's due) the movie wasn't entertaining-- i actually have a weakness for simplistic movies with a clean moral, and the guts to just ignore glaring logical inconsistencies in the setting. But deep? Not really, the director in this case has never really produced anything 'deep'.
What makes good essay writing is obvious symbolism that is like being hit over the head with a bat if you have even a middle-school level education. This is the matrix.
What makes good storytelling is subtle symbolism that you don't notice until later, and then think 'hey, that's kinda neat' instead of 'hey, that's like being hit over the head with a large blunt object'. This is why Star Wars episode 4, 5, and 6 are generally regarded as good storytelling, while 1 and 2 are regarded as almost complete crap and 3 is usually thought of as at best mediocre.
I did not appreciate the bat-beating i got when watching matrix 2 and 3. At least matrix 1 made a passing attempt at subtlety, and you could connect to the characters before NEO IS A SOPHOMORIC ATTEMPT AT A REDEFINITION OF JESUS IN TERMS OF MODERN SOCIETY flashed across the screen in 50-foot tall neon letters.
Also, plotline is a different beast altogether from symbolism and literary reference. The plotline of, for instance, matrix 3 is "a guy is a black trenchcoat gets in a lot of fights with evil robots". The symolism is, apparrently: NEO IS A SOPHOMORIC ATTEMPT AT A REDEFINITION OF JESUS IN TERMS OF MODERN SOCIETY, according to the flashing neon letters.
Finally, I'll also note that catholic schools also have children draw an uninterrupted stream of teddy bears for almost 6 months straight (I spent my first few years in a catholic school). This does not indicate the supreme literary value of the teddy bear (not that the bears don't have a fair amount of literary value, but the fact that a school uses them as a teaching aid does not in any way imply it).
It made sense, it's just that if you blinked, you would have missed it. (Robots suck, and Neo is the same as he was at the end of the last damn movie./end Plot) The rest of it was a bunch of pseudophilosophical babble. Not that i'm opposed to long speeches on philosophy in general principle, but i'd prefer it to be nonobvious, non-sophomoric, or at least something I didn't come up with independently before graduating the fifth grade. Also, lone wolf ascendant characters are no longer interesting after they've achieved godhood. Period. No amount of half-assed references to jesus can make them interesting again.
Also, the action sequences were stolen from dragonball, the english translation of which is generally regarded as the least entertaining piece of literature in the entirety of the language. I only comment about this here because I feel that the action sequences were supposed to, in some way, fill in for the nonexistent plot.
Ok, that's my bitching for today, back to being completely apathetic regarding pop culture.
Right, I'm too lazy to RTFA, but I'm just going to assume that the guy is being taken to court for sabotaging a game and using it to obtain untaxed money from items not marked for resale, not actually for winning at said game. Thus is my faith in humanity kept intact, by not reading the article and finding otherwise.
Ok, I worte a response to this, but then I realized that I didn't know quite what 'consumerism' was, exactly. So i referred myself to dictionary.com:
consumerism
1. The movement seeking to protect and inform consumers by requiring such practices as honest packaging and advertising, product guarantees, and improved safety standards.
2. The theory that a progressively greater consumption of goods is economically beneficial.
3. Attachment to materialistic values or possessions: deplored the rampant consumerism of contemporary society.
1. is, form context, obviously not what we're talking about, as the article is pointing out something rather unsafe for consumers. 3., likewise, is pretty much a universal of human nature in one degree or another, including things like 'being hungry' and 'drinking water before you die of thirst', so that can't be what you're pointing out as a western ideal, either. Thus, I'm going to assume you're talking about 2., here.
In that context, I'm going to say that your assertion is perhaps true (that consumerism is in some degree the natural result of capitalism), but would put forth the argument that it is merely the natural result of any system which places value on all individuals in the economic network, rather than just a small subset (oligarchy) or a mythical whole that doesn't actually exist (communism being fairly close in execution, if not theory). In either of the alternate cases, volume of consumption is not important so much as that consumption be directed to the benefit of the official, well, beneficiary of the system. Only in a case where individuals (or perhaps smaller social units like limited family) are to be valued is the consumerist ideal really a natural result.
I, personally, am willing to put up with a good bit of idiocy from my neighbors in return for a system that places an emphasis on individual benefit rather than someone who is not a member of my own circle. Plus, riots are a valuable part of the natural selection cycle. So... yeah, take the good with the bad, fellow.
On a side note, consumerism is hardly essential to capitalism. In fact, since capitalist theory is basically that the best manufacturer will win out in economic competition, consumerism is more of an attempt to make sure everyone succeeds than anything else... sort of a choke on the selective process of capitalism. Then, economics was not my major, so I might be missing something there.
Yeah, the grandparent must not actually be an american, because I don't think it's any more absurd than any other law in the world. Then, most of them are admittedly pretty silly.
I won't argue with your central complaints, but...
(1)The american president has pretty much 0 personal control of the economy. The only power they have there is appointing people (limited to practically no power at all by the approval of congress) and claiming credit for the accomplishments of the previous set of people who actually have an effect on the economy. This is why Clinton was still a worthless president.
(2) Bush doesn't advocate creationism. The fact that he's dumb enough to believe in it himself doesn't really make him exceptional, either: he just hasn't caught up with the rest of us in dumping silly catholic historical interpretation.
(3) Free speech is generally regarded as protecting communication, especially of ideas. If you're misusing the language to cause a disruption instead of communicate an idea, that's not really covered.
But, yeah, there's a moderately strong faction in the US that wants us to adopt a policy of reciprocal noninterference in international law as well. Of course, if we did this then everyone else would still complain, because it would involve ignoring all the silly regulations that other coutries want to impose on us as well as not imposing our own on them. And it would mess up international corporations even more than they are now. Oh, well, a man can dream.
So by exploiting flaws in the system, individuals can access content not intended for their consumption? Man, complaining about that is like suing a video game company when users can crack the basic composition of their program and access pornographic material that's not part of the actual... oh, wait.
My impression was that 99% of the internet is IN the US (servers, etc). Thus, cutting off the US from the internet would basically just be cutting everyone else off from the internet.
Bad boy! You stuck your thumb in the pie! As punishment, no desert for anyone but you!
Slashdot Mirror
And the ones that laugh at an obvious exercise in humor through parody and sarcasm? Where did they go? I'm disappointed in you all.
Do you really need the "it's funny-- laugh" tag to see when something is posted as a joke?
Well, in defense of the general idea, the point of killing more people in a shorter amount of time is generally to keep them from killing you first. In this context the lives which the war was intended to protect are protected more effectively by better technology.
Right. When the gatling gun was invented, air warfare WAS obsolete. The combat uses of a tethered baloon run on hot air with a suspended wicker basket were and are rather limited.
Or perhaps you should actually READ the statement you're quoting, eh?
You can, however, defend against a high-powered laser by blowing reflective chaff into the region and confusing the targetting system... just like any other countermeasure. Better targetting system? Make cleverer decoys.
But yeah, once we get past that wee problem, a laser's nice to have with the whole 'hits the target at the speed of light, negating the need for extensive and faulty ballistics calculations' thing.
Hey, I can fully support a policy of "If you're going to kill someone, stop jacking around and kill them". The whole "incapacitate people so that they wander off to die of starvation and a twisted ankle in a ditch" thing just seems rather sloppy.
In all honesty, I think people not requiring thsi dehumanization nonsense is actually kind of a credit to the race in general. If someone can decide that killing someone is the right thing to do, and then do it, the killing is much more likely to be the correct action than if they are unsure and use a psychological trick to force themselves to kill someone.
On the other hand, recall that murder requires a motive, which generally involves being at least partially familiar with the intended victim.
Nah, a true cynic knows the difference: a Deist is an idiot that belives god exists and has the guts to acknowledge outright that he really has no evidence one way or another. An atheist is an idiot who believes god doesn't exist, but refuses to acknowledge the fact that he has no evidence one way or another. I'm still not entirely sure why atheists particularly think that they are superior...
Newton's laws aren't actually wrong. They are entirely correct within the frame of reference and resolution of the measurement devices through the beginning of the last century. In fact, one of the first big tests of quantum mechanics was that it had to collapse into newtonian mechanics at the correct scale.
I guess I agree with the spirit of your post, though.
You're either full of shit or an arts major to have so little understanding of what peer review is or how it works. And your hypothesis about discoveries contradicting established findings is almost exactly the reverse of the actual situation. While you're certainly welcome to voice you're opinion, don't expect to garner any respect doing it when you obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
For the record, that doesn't rhyme.
Maybe they could tie it in with the soda adds? "Buy a coke, or you'll parch, on the 17th of March." Hm... yeah, still not very good. Too many syllables in "seventeen".
Generally, it's called a comic if it's meant to be funny somehow. I get the feeling that this particular story wasn't.
Not likely. Has britain ever actually managed a month without the IRA blowing something up in a large city? The movie would be delayed forever.
I'm a fan of Equilibrium, personally. It's about like the Matrix, but the heavy hand with the symbolism bat comes across as funny instead of painfully pretentious, somehow. Also, it had 'gun kata' which reduced me to helpless laughter for over 1/3 of the movie. I had to keep pausing and rewinding so i wouldn't miss parts.
The problem is that you are measuring depth in terms of the web of literary reference, and some of us are measuring depth in terms of the web of meaning created by the tale itself, i.e. the quality of the story. The the former context, sure, signs was deep. In the latter, sorry, no go. Not that (to give credit where it's due) the movie wasn't entertaining-- i actually have a weakness for simplistic movies with a clean moral, and the guts to just ignore glaring logical inconsistencies in the setting. But deep? Not really, the director in this case has never really produced anything 'deep'.
What makes good essay writing is obvious symbolism that is like being hit over the head with a bat if you have even a middle-school level education. This is the matrix.
What makes good storytelling is subtle symbolism that you don't notice until later, and then think 'hey, that's kinda neat' instead of 'hey, that's like being hit over the head with a large blunt object'. This is why Star Wars episode 4, 5, and 6 are generally regarded as good storytelling, while 1 and 2 are regarded as almost complete crap and 3 is usually thought of as at best mediocre.
I did not appreciate the bat-beating i got when watching matrix 2 and 3. At least matrix 1 made a passing attempt at subtlety, and you could connect to the characters before NEO IS A SOPHOMORIC ATTEMPT AT A REDEFINITION OF JESUS IN TERMS OF MODERN SOCIETY flashed across the screen in 50-foot tall neon letters.
Also, plotline is a different beast altogether from symbolism and literary reference. The plotline of, for instance, matrix 3 is "a guy is a black trenchcoat gets in a lot of fights with evil robots". The symolism is, apparrently: NEO IS A SOPHOMORIC ATTEMPT AT A REDEFINITION OF JESUS IN TERMS OF MODERN SOCIETY, according to the flashing neon letters.
Finally, I'll also note that catholic schools also have children draw an uninterrupted stream of teddy bears for almost 6 months straight (I spent my first few years in a catholic school). This does not indicate the supreme literary value of the teddy bear (not that the bears don't have a fair amount of literary value, but the fact that a school uses them as a teaching aid does not in any way imply it).
It made sense, it's just that if you blinked, you would have missed it. (Robots suck, and Neo is the same as he was at the end of the last damn movie. /end Plot) The rest of it was a bunch of pseudophilosophical babble. Not that i'm opposed to long speeches on philosophy in general principle, but i'd prefer it to be nonobvious, non-sophomoric, or at least something I didn't come up with independently before graduating the fifth grade. Also, lone wolf ascendant characters are no longer interesting after they've achieved godhood. Period. No amount of half-assed references to jesus can make them interesting again.
Also, the action sequences were stolen from dragonball, the english translation of which is generally regarded as the least entertaining piece of literature in the entirety of the language. I only comment about this here because I feel that the action sequences were supposed to, in some way, fill in for the nonexistent plot.
Ok, that's my bitching for today, back to being completely apathetic regarding pop culture.
Right, I'm too lazy to RTFA, but I'm just going to assume that the guy is being taken to court for sabotaging a game and using it to obtain untaxed money from items not marked for resale, not actually for winning at said game. Thus is my faith in humanity kept intact, by not reading the article and finding otherwise.
Haha.
"You should be glad, they are contented by different things than you are, and so are not in competition with you."
That's really funny for some reason, while still being a valid point. Mind if I steal it for future conversations?
Ok, I worte a response to this, but then I realized that I didn't know quite what 'consumerism' was, exactly. So i referred myself to dictionary.com:
consumerism
1. The movement seeking to protect and inform consumers by requiring such practices as honest packaging and advertising, product guarantees, and improved safety standards.
2. The theory that a progressively greater consumption of goods is economically beneficial.
3. Attachment to materialistic values or possessions: deplored the rampant consumerism of contemporary society.
1. is, form context, obviously not what we're talking about, as the article is pointing out something rather unsafe for consumers. 3., likewise, is pretty much a universal of human nature in one degree or another, including things like 'being hungry' and 'drinking water before you die of thirst', so that can't be what you're pointing out as a western ideal, either. Thus, I'm going to assume you're talking about 2., here.
In that context, I'm going to say that your assertion is perhaps true (that consumerism is in some degree the natural result of capitalism), but would put forth the argument that it is merely the natural result of any system which places value on all individuals in the economic network, rather than just a small subset (oligarchy) or a mythical whole that doesn't actually exist (communism being fairly close in execution, if not theory). In either of the alternate cases, volume of consumption is not important so much as that consumption be directed to the benefit of the official, well, beneficiary of the system. Only in a case where individuals (or perhaps smaller social units like limited family) are to be valued is the consumerist ideal really a natural result.
I, personally, am willing to put up with a good bit of idiocy from my neighbors in return for a system that places an emphasis on individual benefit rather than someone who is not a member of my own circle. Plus, riots are a valuable part of the natural selection cycle. So... yeah, take the good with the bad, fellow.
On a side note, consumerism is hardly essential to capitalism. In fact, since capitalist theory is basically that the best manufacturer will win out in economic competition, consumerism is more of an attempt to make sure everyone succeeds than anything else... sort of a choke on the selective process of capitalism. Then, economics was not my major, so I might be missing something there.
On the other hand, Americans are capable of watching a bloody soccer game without trampling anyone to death. We all have our little quirks.
Yeah, the grandparent must not actually be an american, because I don't think it's any more absurd than any other law in the world. Then, most of them are admittedly pretty silly.
I won't argue with your central complaints, but...
(1)The american president has pretty much 0 personal control of the economy. The only power they have there is appointing people (limited to practically no power at all by the approval of congress) and claiming credit for the accomplishments of the previous set of people who actually have an effect on the economy. This is why Clinton was still a worthless president.
(2) Bush doesn't advocate creationism. The fact that he's dumb enough to believe in it himself doesn't really make him exceptional, either: he just hasn't caught up with the rest of us in dumping silly catholic historical interpretation.
(3) Free speech is generally regarded as protecting communication, especially of ideas. If you're misusing the language to cause a disruption instead of communicate an idea, that's not really covered.
But, yeah, there's a moderately strong faction in the US that wants us to adopt a policy of reciprocal noninterference in international law as well. Of course, if we did this then everyone else would still complain, because it would involve ignoring all the silly regulations that other coutries want to impose on us as well as not imposing our own on them. And it would mess up international corporations even more than they are now. Oh, well, a man can dream.
So by exploiting flaws in the system, individuals can access content not intended for their consumption? Man, complaining about that is like suing a video game company when users can crack the basic composition of their program and access pornographic material that's not part of the actual... oh, wait.
My impression was that 99% of the internet is IN the US (servers, etc). Thus, cutting off the US from the internet would basically just be cutting everyone else off from the internet.
Bad boy! You stuck your thumb in the pie! As punishment, no desert for anyone but you!
Yeah, seems kinda silly.