Um, yes, you do. Against China in particular, as well as Thailand, and (ahem) Israel. There was a bomb detonated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 85 people and injured hundreds back in 1995. I traveled to Argentina the following year: no fingerprints.
I was in London 2 weeks after the tube bombs, as well. No finger prints.
Clearly, other countries aren't as wussy as the US is.
I think that real-time collaboration is a flawed concept in most contexts. People are not at their best when they have to be creative, inventive, or thoughtful in real-time with an audience. Nor do people do their best analysis when they're sitting around a (virtual) whiteboard.
Asynchronous collaboration tools are always going to be more important than synchronous ones; synchronous is better for broadcast and one-to-many communication.
I agree with your interpretation: one thing Marx criticized was treating economics as an entirely separate sphere from society and politics. In some ways, a non-statist (in the national sense) version of socialism is when your local neighborhood meeting also addresses economic issues as well as transportation and education ones - and markets become ways that neighborhoods and the people in them exchange goods and services.
That Buddhism has a history of influence is not unusual among religions: Christianity itself is a blend of Hellenic and Judaic thought, and Islam is a distillation of Abrahamic religion with pre-Islamic Arab beliefs. Many contemporary versions of Christianity (e.g., Santeria, the religions of contemporary Mayan and Andean peoples) are also hybrids of Christianity and other practices.
Japanese religion is complicated by the fact that there is a pronounced absence of religious feeling in modern Japan. I have described Japanese religiosity as "ironic religion" - an ability to play with a range of traditions and traditional practices that is as much a symptom of post-modernity as anything else. It is not a characteristic of Buddhism (and the history of Buddhism in Japan is comparable to other religious histories) as it is characteristic of Japan. In many ways, Japanese religion is the very opposite of Western religion: belief is considered irrelevant, but ceremonial practices are maintained as a way of preserving national cultural identity and community membership.
It is incorrect to describe Shinto as a fusion of Buddhism with traditional beliefs. Shinto is a distinct practice from Buddhism, although most Japanese sample from both. (The cliche is that you go to the Shinto shrine for weddings and Buddhist temples for funerals.)
I actually know a good deal about Buddhism, and especially Japanese religion, and studied it at a pretty advanced level. I also used to identify as Buddhist, but I stopped when I came to see Western Buddhism as an attempt to dress up secular humanism with a quasi-religious veneer.
Um, that's the point. The Sinhalese (or at least, many of them, particularly in the recent past) were Buddhist nationalists quite disinterested in the non-exclusivity of which you spoke, and who wanted to maintain Buddhism as the national religion of the state, marginalizing the largely Hindu, Christian and Muslim Tamils.
The kind of Buddhism imported to the West - secularized, made "not a religion," turned into a kind of set of technologies for personal development, stripped of any perspectives that generally clash with regular humanism - is very much unlike the Buddhisms of Asia, which are very much religions, which have real religious exclusivity, which have outright superstitions, rituals, etc.
The countries that the Imperial government invaded during the 2nd World War were, with the exception of China, all colonial holdings dominated by whites. With some justification, they viewed their role as one of liberators against a colonialist project that had pretty much conquered the world.
And as bad as the burakumin had it, they were given full civil rights before African Americans were. And "Western culture" is still full of bigotry on a social level - just like Japan is.
Then, you didn't read the article. At all. Because, that's not in the article. Anywhere.
Without white-washing Japanese chauvinism, Burakumin has a better level of representation in the Japanese Diet (the legislature) than do any minorities in the US Congress.
I know a lot about addiction, both personally and discursively. I can't do much more here except say: "I know what I'm talking about." But I know what I'm talking about.
The friends and family of someone in a cycle of addiction can play an important role in communicating that 1. there's a problem and 2. it's possible to overcome it.
Game addiction isn't like other addictions. I think it's a real problem and I don't have qualms about using the word "addiction," but it seems more amenable to casual intervention than others are, if you can find better ways to meet the same needs that the game is addressing (sociability, accomplishment, visual and mental stimulation.)
I think as sad as the game addiction is, the attitude of many to simply give up on him and let him fail at life is at least as sad. Friends and family are supposed to care; the profound alienation some geeks have from the rest of humanity except at the most distant and constrained levels is really tragic.
My suggestion to the OP: fortunately, game addiction isn't like other addictions, and it often doesn't take the same bottoming-out to get things under control. Most game addicts (I don't want to mince words: on the short to medium term, it is practically indistinguishable from addiction - pedantry about it is unhelpful) seem to stop playing addictively when they start building social skills and active lives, which of course creates a positive feedback loop. My suggestion: get him out of the house. Vacations, nights-out, activities. Work with him in getting a busy activity calendar. This seems to be effective in getting people to stop obsessive playing, because it scratches the "itch" of sociality that MMOs always promise to scratch but never quite satisfies.
The difference is a bit one: a diagnosis is based on an observation that the patient has a significant different from some determined norm that is negatively affecting their well-being or shortening their lives. For medical conditions, this is generally an easy call to make.
For psychiatrical ones, the effect is to take social, cultural, and economic context and naturalize it completely (and often incorrectly.) A change in attentional regimes is supposed to make it difficult to adapt to the very society that creates a change in attentional regimes? What is the "natural" structure of human attention anyway? We learn how to attend when we participate in joint attentional fields, which change dramatically with changes in childrearing conditions and media climates, which vary wildly according to class, ethnicity, nationality, etc. To neutralize all that, determine a "norm" (usually as much about parental anxieties as it is about the long-term interests of the child), which is really the *previous* generation's attentional structure, is exactly the problem here.
But it's the fans that insist in keeping these series alive well past their sell-by dates. They don't want art or narratives that are well-crafted and remark interestingly on the world we live in - they want imaginary worlds that they can escape into, with reassuringly familiar characters.
What that tells me about Lost is that they do a good job of managing their prop inventory.
I think it is likely they just mine earlier episodes for visual and (ahem) "plot" elements and then drop a subsequent reference or explanation to them in later. No foresight or planning required.
Should we respect Goofy's aspiration to transcend his origins and disapprove of Pluto's ignomy, or should we reject Goofy as a social-climbing pretender and admire Pluto's authenticity?
What I find baffling is that Goofy is a dog, and Pluto is a dog. But Goofy wears clothes, drives, and talks - and Pluto just runs around, barks and wags his tail.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, yes, you do. Against China in particular, as well as Thailand, and (ahem) Israel. There was a bomb detonated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 85 people and injured hundreds back in 1995. I traveled to Argentina the following year: no fingerprints.
I was in London 2 weeks after the tube bombs, as well. No finger prints.
Clearly, other countries aren't as wussy as the US is.
I think that real-time collaboration is a flawed concept in most contexts. People are not at their best when they have to be creative, inventive, or thoughtful in real-time with an audience. Nor do people do their best analysis when they're sitting around a (virtual) whiteboard.
Asynchronous collaboration tools are always going to be more important than synchronous ones; synchronous is better for broadcast and one-to-many communication.
I agree with your interpretation: one thing Marx criticized was treating economics as an entirely separate sphere from society and politics. In some ways, a non-statist (in the national sense) version of socialism is when your local neighborhood meeting also addresses economic issues as well as transportation and education ones - and markets become ways that neighborhoods and the people in them exchange goods and services.
That Buddhism has a history of influence is not unusual among religions: Christianity itself is a blend of Hellenic and Judaic thought, and Islam is a distillation of Abrahamic religion with pre-Islamic Arab beliefs. Many contemporary versions of Christianity (e.g., Santeria, the religions of contemporary Mayan and Andean peoples) are also hybrids of Christianity and other practices.
Japanese religion is complicated by the fact that there is a pronounced absence of religious feeling in modern Japan. I have described Japanese religiosity as "ironic religion" - an ability to play with a range of traditions and traditional practices that is as much a symptom of post-modernity as anything else. It is not a characteristic of Buddhism (and the history of Buddhism in Japan is comparable to other religious histories) as it is characteristic of Japan. In many ways, Japanese religion is the very opposite of Western religion: belief is considered irrelevant, but ceremonial practices are maintained as a way of preserving national cultural identity and community membership.
It is incorrect to describe Shinto as a fusion of Buddhism with traditional beliefs. Shinto is a distinct practice from Buddhism, although most Japanese sample from both. (The cliche is that you go to the Shinto shrine for weddings and Buddhist temples for funerals.)
I actually know a good deal about Buddhism, and especially Japanese religion, and studied it at a pretty advanced level. I also used to identify as Buddhist, but I stopped when I came to see Western Buddhism as an attempt to dress up secular humanism with a quasi-religious veneer.
Um, that's the point. The Sinhalese (or at least, many of them, particularly in the recent past) were Buddhist nationalists quite disinterested in the non-exclusivity of which you spoke, and who wanted to maintain Buddhism as the national religion of the state, marginalizing the largely Hindu, Christian and Muslim Tamils.
Tell that to the Tamils.
The kind of Buddhism imported to the West - secularized, made "not a religion," turned into a kind of set of technologies for personal development, stripped of any perspectives that generally clash with regular humanism - is very much unlike the Buddhisms of Asia, which are very much religions, which have real religious exclusivity, which have outright superstitions, rituals, etc.
The countries that the Imperial government invaded during the 2nd World War were, with the exception of China, all colonial holdings dominated by whites. With some justification, they viewed their role as one of liberators against a colonialist project that had pretty much conquered the world.
And as bad as the burakumin had it, they were given full civil rights before African Americans were. And "Western culture" is still full of bigotry on a social level - just like Japan is.
Then, you didn't read the article. At all. Because, that's not in the article. Anywhere.
Without white-washing Japanese chauvinism, Burakumin has a better level of representation in the Japanese Diet (the legislature) than do any minorities in the US Congress.
I've been vacuuming for over thirty-five years, and I still can't get the dust-bunnies underneath the refrigerator.
I have helped a lot of people through drug and alcohol addiction. And I've helped people through other types of addiction, too.
And if you knew much about addiction, you'd know that withdrawals are the easy part.
I know a lot about addiction, both personally and discursively. I can't do much more here except say: "I know what I'm talking about." But I know what I'm talking about.
The friends and family of someone in a cycle of addiction can play an important role in communicating that 1. there's a problem and 2. it's possible to overcome it.
Game addiction isn't like other addictions. I think it's a real problem and I don't have qualms about using the word "addiction," but it seems more amenable to casual intervention than others are, if you can find better ways to meet the same needs that the game is addressing (sociability, accomplishment, visual and mental stimulation.)
I think as sad as the game addiction is, the attitude of many to simply give up on him and let him fail at life is at least as sad. Friends and family are supposed to care; the profound alienation some geeks have from the rest of humanity except at the most distant and constrained levels is really tragic.
My suggestion to the OP: fortunately, game addiction isn't like other addictions, and it often doesn't take the same bottoming-out to get things under control. Most game addicts (I don't want to mince words: on the short to medium term, it is practically indistinguishable from addiction - pedantry about it is unhelpful) seem to stop playing addictively when they start building social skills and active lives, which of course creates a positive feedback loop. My suggestion: get him out of the house. Vacations, nights-out, activities. Work with him in getting a busy activity calendar. This seems to be effective in getting people to stop obsessive playing, because it scratches the "itch" of sociality that MMOs always promise to scratch but never quite satisfies.
The difference is a bit one: a diagnosis is based on an observation that the patient has a significant different from some determined norm that is negatively affecting their well-being or shortening their lives. For medical conditions, this is generally an easy call to make.
For psychiatrical ones, the effect is to take social, cultural, and economic context and naturalize it completely (and often incorrectly.) A change in attentional regimes is supposed to make it difficult to adapt to the very society that creates a change in attentional regimes? What is the "natural" structure of human attention anyway? We learn how to attend when we participate in joint attentional fields, which change dramatically with changes in childrearing conditions and media climates, which vary wildly according to class, ethnicity, nationality, etc. To neutralize all that, determine a "norm" (usually as much about parental anxieties as it is about the long-term interests of the child), which is really the *previous* generation's attentional structure, is exactly the problem here.
But it's the fans that insist in keeping these series alive well past their sell-by dates. They don't want art or narratives that are well-crafted and remark interestingly on the world we live in - they want imaginary worlds that they can escape into, with reassuringly familiar characters.
What that tells me about Lost is that they do a good job of managing their prop inventory.
I think it is likely they just mine earlier episodes for visual and (ahem) "plot" elements and then drop a subsequent reference or explanation to them in later. No foresight or planning required.
In general, the liberals will pitch a fit, yet defend your right to do it. That's why the ACLU protects Nazi marches.
As someone who has followed the career of the Yes Men, I sense a merry blend of social satire and commentary in this product announcement.
Should we respect Goofy's aspiration to transcend his origins and disapprove of Pluto's ignomy, or should we reject Goofy as a social-climbing pretender and admire Pluto's authenticity?
What I find baffling is that Goofy is a dog, and Pluto is a dog. But Goofy wears clothes, drives, and talks - and Pluto just runs around, barks and wags his tail.
It's just... not right.
"Ralph."
E.g., "can you tell me the names of the original members of the Bay City Rollers?" "Ralph it for yourself."
I don't know, my Cub Scout years were some of the most productive of my life.
If inability to reproduce qualifies one for the Darwin Awards, I think 90% of the Linux user-base can make it to the finals.