Then you didn't finish the article, including the fact that Ecuador was, at one point, granted just this sort of relief. Ecuador chose not to exercise their right to ignore US intellectual property claims, and instead used it as leverage in trade negotiations.
If someone said that the MPAA, RIAA or BSA "controlled" the government, I'd call that wacky paranoid raving.
But whatever the outcome of this case, I think it's a very reasonable proposition that those organizations wield an extensive and disproportionate influence over US policy, often against the best interests of the public at large.
I think a certain level of education is seen as a prerequisite for equality of opportunity, not an outcome of it.
The rich benefit from everything the system offers, including an educated workforce, an extensive transportation system, and defended borders. Because they are rich, they have benefited more than others have. So, yes, their obligations are greater.
So, what this does, is increase supply, which will lower demand and thus labor costs! Having more people compete in a labor market is not good for the people who are already in it, you know...
To me, this is a somewhat self-serving drive by business executives who are tired of paying engineers salaries which are almost as much as half their own.
The word "relative" is also a term that adds little to understanding. There has been too much thinking in cliches in the Anglo-American intellectual tradition of the past 40-some years. Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault have given us a framework to really think beyond such childish categories, but that kind of difficult thinking about basic conceptual frameworks is neglected in favor of philosophy as a kind of subset of logic or set theory.
We live in a society that maintains Judeo-Christian moral categories while having dispensed with the spiritual understanding and historical circumstances that produced them. Secular humanism is the persistence of Christian morality without Christian metaphysics - and referring to Stalin and Hitler as simply "evil" and "bad men" is what that is. It is a blindness to the emotional and situational components which produce that response.
I already dread the thread that follows on this post: the critique I'm making is one that, I suspect, maybe one out of a hundred of the readers of it will understand, and I'll have to deal with the impugned moral instincts of the other 99 percent. But sometimes it has to be said, anyway.
And no, I don't "like" Hitler, Stalin, etc., and I generally prefer to be gentle and kind and prefer the company of gentle and kind people. But I'm tired of giving lip-service to lazy thinking.
I'm critiquing the bad writing on the freakin' write-up. It's not off-topic to observe that the write-up itself is badly written. If I were criticizing a post or something, that would be different.
But, of course, critiquing an OT critique is even more OT than the first comment, so clearly, you're bored, and I haven't had my coffee.
I hate fandom. Not just the term, but the relationship that it indicates: the escapism, the tacky consumerism, the "brand loyalty," the shallow, yet obsessional style of viewing/reading. I feel like too many people who are otherwise reasonably smart are allowing themselves to linger in a pre-adolescent mode of cultural consumption.
Words I prefer:
audience. viewer. reader. aficionado. critic (this is not a negative term). appreciator. Call yourself an appreciator of Star Trek, a viewer. Even an aficionado, or an enthusiast.
What seems to create the most success is a mix of values that actually reflect those which operate in the world: a blend of competition and cooperation. That is what teamwork is: the celebration of the unique contributions an individual can bring to a group to help that group compete successfully against other groups. (Japan is an excellent example of this.)
Cooperation without a sense of struggle or conflict is ineffective as an educational principle, as well - it isn't consonant with the real-world experiences of children. The problem with educational theory in the US is that it is divided between individualist-competitors and social-cooperators who are each fighting on one or another side of a culture war, unable to see how their opposites have a vital component that they themselves are missing.
Something else just occurred to me - you describe how teachers prefer to teach toward the bottom of the class. A lot of that is actually admirable and appropriate, I think: a society with a huge illiteracy rate would be a bigger problem than a society where some of the brightest and best are bored and have to find stimulation out of class. At the same time, I can't help but think of Matthew Broderick's character in "Election," who wanted very much to be a "good teacher" as long as his students didn't excel too much. The drive and ability shown by Reese Witherspoon's character, however, he couldn't stand - the kind of pleasure he got from his patronizing stance toward students whose accomplishments were unlikely to surpass his own significantly in scale was threatened by her character, who was clearly destined for grander things. Of course, all the resentment came out in the final scene in the movie, where the emotional logic of his character was stripped bare.
Is that what you mean about "why most teachers become teachers in the first place?"
(except they somehow still don't want the special ed kids and the out-of-control kids, of course)
I have a word for that: "plateau solipsism." (A misuse of the word "solipsism," but it captures the nature of the trait.) I describe that as the tendency to naturalize the difference between one's self and peer group, and those "below" them, while either not even seeing the gaps between themselves and those "above" them (whether intellectually, creatively, socially, culturally, etc.) or viewing those as arbitrary and accidental, or even just wrong. So, the kid who has a learning disability is out because they don't mean the grade, but those snobs who watch foreign films and laugh at our bad sci-fi tastes should let us hang out with them and realize that our tastes are "just as good as" theirs.
Embracing difference means embracing the fact that there are spheres and planes to which one may only aspire, and competencies one will never achieve.
In retrospect, it isn't excelling that brings retaliation.
It's attitude.
When I was young, I was so eager to show of my accomplishments, I was obnoxious. And I wasn't interested in the success of others around me. You cannot simultaneously expect to derive pleasure from proving your superiority to others and still receive their well-wishes. If they see your success as theirs in some way (the way, for example, we feel when a child of ours succeeds) then that retaliation is unlikely.
I wouldn't say I deserved the bullying I got, but I see very much how I helped generate it. And I would now be annoyed to hang out with someone who was like I was at that age. In turns out that socio-economic class issues were also at work, but that's a whole other bag of beans. (Funny how geeks seldom speak of having summered in Europe....)
"Biased"? In fact, our brains aren't meant to do scientific modeling. They are meant to create models of our immediate physical environment, and (importantly) to help us in the process of sexual selection.
I am very reluctant, and in fact critical, of tendencies to explain top-level phenomena (religion) in terms of bottom-level apparata (brains) too readily.
I don't think that's true, actually. A lot of jocks and socialites come out of school feeling good about themselves, as do class presidents and art-class types. The hyper-focus on academic success is something that occurs, as a rule, among the academically successful.
Of course, perhaps religious thought is evolutionarily adaptive. If a religion motivates its adherents to produce more offspring than they otherwise would, and those offspring grow to adulthood and do the same, then it will be more successful than a value system which encourages personal achievement and the acquisition of material goods, which is what the main alternative seems to be.
Evolutionary models may provide an argument against belief in evolutionary models.
While there's some truth to what you say, a lot of people with mediocre achievements use excuses like the boredom of school as an excuse for their untapped potential, and geeks are among the worst of the lot. Success isn't about intelligence: it's also about discipline, energy, drive, and attitude. A surplus of the last four can even mitigate against weaknesses in brain power. Of course, if all you have is brain power (and a general absence of proportionate accomplishments) then you're like to elevate that above all other criteria.
If you are smart but otherwise ungifted, you'll probably find yourself surrounded by people you feel smarter than. If you're smart and living up to your potential, you should probably stop feeling smart, because you should be surrounded by people at least as smart as you are.
The brain isn't like a computer at all. It's just more like a computer than it is like other machines we've invented, and historically we use mechanical metaphors for memory and thought. During Freud's era, steam, cinema and electricity were the metaphors for the mind. Now, it's computers.
This finding about memories also shows some of the problems with functionalist explanations for cognition that assume the existence of "modules," neglecting both the plasticity and dynamism of cognition. The brain creates its functions by "coming up to meet" the world the best it can, dynamically. Going into depth about this, and how it displaces older cognitive models, would make for far too long a post. this is a good starting reading list, however.
The bill may not work, and I don't like the repression of free expression. But completely ending a phenomenon isn't the criteria that we look at. There are laws against murder and rape, yet people get murdered and raped. Does that mean those laws "don't work?" The question is whether there is a difference in the level of those events before and after legislation.
Because the US was partially settled and founded by a fanatical religious sect that was fleeing a crackdown in England after it had assassinated the English king?
I recently listened to a radio report where it was observed how strange American sentimentalization about Puritans is to many English people, considering the were their era's Al Qaeda in some ways.
I know California-bashing is the past-time of resentful red-staters and yokels, but this is neither the only nor the first such anti-violent-videogame legislation to come down the pike. Here is a helpful map and article.
I think videogames should be protected as speech. The trouble is, speech isn't really protected as speech, either. The distribution of sexually-explicit materials is controlled and restricted throughout the country, as are original derivative (not an oxymoron) works that are held to violate rather strict intellectual property standards(e.g., mash-ups, fan fiction, etc.) This particularly true for minors, to which this legislation is targeted. I'll be more impressed by gamers who are also willing to advocate for the revocation of obscenity statutes and to advocate for the legal, unrestricted sale of pornography to minors. Since most aren't, the outrage about this issue seems a little hypocritical.
I do not label believers "wacko" or "senile." Superstitious, perhaps, because I think religions are superstitions: residual beliefs held for reasons that are sociocultural rather than empirical, analytical or even introspective. But I'll just settle for "wrong." We're all wrong about lots of stuff. But I'm unafraid to characterize religious thinking as wrong, and to bring attention to its contradictions and (even more importantly) its contingencies, in appropriate settings. Many religious people consider any kind of critique like this a form of harassment or abuse. Ultimately, the modern defense of religion winds up being sentimental, after one cuts through the layers of theological sediment. And that sentimentality also informs humanism, which is, in its way, Christianity without God.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you didn't finish the article, including the fact that Ecuador was, at one point, granted just this sort of relief. Ecuador chose not to exercise their right to ignore US intellectual property claims, and instead used it as leverage in trade negotiations.
If someone said that the MPAA, RIAA or BSA "controlled" the government, I'd call that wacky paranoid raving.
But whatever the outcome of this case, I think it's a very reasonable proposition that those organizations wield an extensive and disproportionate influence over US policy, often against the best interests of the public at large.
A couple years of repetitive, mindless tasks will take the bothersome spark out of them. Never underestimate the soul-killing power of menial labor.
I think a certain level of education is seen as a prerequisite for equality of opportunity, not an outcome of it.
The rich benefit from everything the system offers, including an educated workforce, an extensive transportation system, and defended borders. Because they are rich, they have benefited more than others have. So, yes, their obligations are greater.
So, what this does, is increase supply, which will lower demand and thus labor costs! Having more people compete in a labor market is not good for the people who are already in it, you know...
To me, this is a somewhat self-serving drive by business executives who are tired of paying engineers salaries which are almost as much as half their own.
The word "relative" is also a term that adds little to understanding. There has been too much thinking in cliches in the Anglo-American intellectual tradition of the past 40-some years. Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault have given us a framework to really think beyond such childish categories, but that kind of difficult thinking about basic conceptual frameworks is neglected in favor of philosophy as a kind of subset of logic or set theory.
We live in a society that maintains Judeo-Christian moral categories while having dispensed with the spiritual understanding and historical circumstances that produced them. Secular humanism is the persistence of Christian morality without Christian metaphysics - and referring to Stalin and Hitler as simply "evil" and "bad men" is what that is. It is a blindness to the emotional and situational components which produce that response.
I already dread the thread that follows on this post: the critique I'm making is one that, I suspect, maybe one out of a hundred of the readers of it will understand, and I'll have to deal with the impugned moral instincts of the other 99 percent. But sometimes it has to be said, anyway.
And no, I don't "like" Hitler, Stalin, etc., and I generally prefer to be gentle and kind and prefer the company of gentle and kind people. But I'm tired of giving lip-service to lazy thinking.
House? Whose "house" is the write-up?
I'm critiquing the bad writing on the freakin' write-up. It's not off-topic to observe that the write-up itself is badly written. If I were criticizing a post or something, that would be different.
But, of course, critiquing an OT critique is even more OT than the first comment, so clearly, you're bored, and I haven't had my coffee.
"Discussion?"
For the love of gravy, it's about D&D 4th edition, not international trade policy.
I hate fandom. Not just the term, but the relationship that it indicates: the escapism, the tacky consumerism, the "brand loyalty," the shallow, yet obsessional style of viewing/reading. I feel like too many people who are otherwise reasonably smart are allowing themselves to linger in a pre-adolescent mode of cultural consumption.
Words I prefer:
audience. viewer. reader. aficionado. critic (this is not a negative term). appreciator. Call yourself an appreciator of Star Trek, a viewer. Even an aficionado, or an enthusiast.
I liked Deep Space 9: I'm not a fan.
"system that obsoletes..."
Verbing weirds language.
What seems to create the most success is a mix of values that actually reflect those which operate in the world: a blend of competition and cooperation. That is what teamwork is: the celebration of the unique contributions an individual can bring to a group to help that group compete successfully against other groups. (Japan is an excellent example of this.)
Cooperation without a sense of struggle or conflict is ineffective as an educational principle, as well - it isn't consonant with the real-world experiences of children. The problem with educational theory in the US is that it is divided between individualist-competitors and social-cooperators who are each fighting on one or another side of a culture war, unable to see how their opposites have a vital component that they themselves are missing.
Something else just occurred to me - you describe how teachers prefer to teach toward the bottom of the class. A lot of that is actually admirable and appropriate, I think: a society with a huge illiteracy rate would be a bigger problem than a society where some of the brightest and best are bored and have to find stimulation out of class. At the same time, I can't help but think of Matthew Broderick's character in "Election," who wanted very much to be a "good teacher" as long as his students didn't excel too much. The drive and ability shown by Reese Witherspoon's character, however, he couldn't stand - the kind of pleasure he got from his patronizing stance toward students whose accomplishments were unlikely to surpass his own significantly in scale was threatened by her character, who was clearly destined for grander things. Of course, all the resentment came out in the final scene in the movie, where the emotional logic of his character was stripped bare.
Is that what you mean about "why most teachers become teachers in the first place?"
I have a word for that: "plateau solipsism." (A misuse of the word "solipsism," but it captures the nature of the trait.) I describe that as the tendency to naturalize the difference between one's self and peer group, and those "below" them, while either not even seeing the gaps between themselves and those "above" them (whether intellectually, creatively, socially, culturally, etc.) or viewing those as arbitrary and accidental, or even just wrong. So, the kid who has a learning disability is out because they don't mean the grade, but those snobs who watch foreign films and laugh at our bad sci-fi tastes should let us hang out with them and realize that our tastes are "just as good as" theirs.
Embracing difference means embracing the fact that there are spheres and planes to which one may only aspire, and competencies one will never achieve.
In retrospect, it isn't excelling that brings retaliation.
It's attitude.
When I was young, I was so eager to show of my accomplishments, I was obnoxious. And I wasn't interested in the success of others around me. You cannot simultaneously expect to derive pleasure from proving your superiority to others and still receive their well-wishes. If they see your success as theirs in some way (the way, for example, we feel when a child of ours succeeds) then that retaliation is unlikely.
I wouldn't say I deserved the bullying I got, but I see very much how I helped generate it. And I would now be annoyed to hang out with someone who was like I was at that age. In turns out that socio-economic class issues were also at work, but that's a whole other bag of beans. (Funny how geeks seldom speak of having summered in Europe....)
"Biased"? In fact, our brains aren't meant to do scientific modeling. They are meant to create models of our immediate physical environment, and (importantly) to help us in the process of sexual selection.
I am very reluctant, and in fact critical, of tendencies to explain top-level phenomena (religion) in terms of bottom-level apparata (brains) too readily.
I don't think that's true, actually. A lot of jocks and socialites come out of school feeling good about themselves, as do class presidents and art-class types. The hyper-focus on academic success is something that occurs, as a rule, among the academically successful.
Of course, perhaps religious thought is evolutionarily adaptive. If a religion motivates its adherents to produce more offspring than they otherwise would, and those offspring grow to adulthood and do the same, then it will be more successful than a value system which encourages personal achievement and the acquisition of material goods, which is what the main alternative seems to be.
Evolutionary models may provide an argument against belief in evolutionary models.
While there's some truth to what you say, a lot of people with mediocre achievements use excuses like the boredom of school as an excuse for their untapped potential, and geeks are among the worst of the lot. Success isn't about intelligence: it's also about discipline, energy, drive, and attitude. A surplus of the last four can even mitigate against weaknesses in brain power. Of course, if all you have is brain power (and a general absence of proportionate accomplishments) then you're like to elevate that above all other criteria.
If you are smart but otherwise ungifted, you'll probably find yourself surrounded by people you feel smarter than. If you're smart and living up to your potential, you should probably stop feeling smart, because you should be surrounded by people at least as smart as you are.
The brain isn't like a computer at all. It's just more like a computer than it is like other machines we've invented, and historically we use mechanical metaphors for memory and thought. During Freud's era, steam, cinema and electricity were the metaphors for the mind. Now, it's computers.
This finding about memories also shows some of the problems with functionalist explanations for cognition that assume the existence of "modules," neglecting both the plasticity and dynamism of cognition. The brain creates its functions by "coming up to meet" the world the best it can, dynamically. Going into depth about this, and how it displaces older cognitive models, would make for far too long a post. this is a good starting reading list, however.
Buy one, get one free!
The bill may not work, and I don't like the repression of free expression. But completely ending a phenomenon isn't the criteria that we look at. There are laws against murder and rape, yet people get murdered and raped. Does that mean those laws "don't work?" The question is whether there is a difference in the level of those events before and after legislation.
The argument needs to be stronger than that.
Because the US was partially settled and founded by a fanatical religious sect that was fleeing a crackdown in England after it had assassinated the English king?
I recently listened to a radio report where it was observed how strange American sentimentalization about Puritans is to many English people, considering the were their era's Al Qaeda in some ways.
I know California-bashing is the past-time of resentful red-staters and yokels, but this is neither the only nor the first such anti-violent-videogame legislation to come down the pike. Here is a helpful map and article.
I think videogames should be protected as speech. The trouble is, speech isn't really protected as speech, either. The distribution of sexually-explicit materials is controlled and restricted throughout the country, as are original derivative (not an oxymoron) works that are held to violate rather strict intellectual property standards(e.g., mash-ups, fan fiction, etc.) This particularly true for minors, to which this legislation is targeted. I'll be more impressed by gamers who are also willing to advocate for the revocation of obscenity statutes and to advocate for the legal, unrestricted sale of pornography to minors. Since most aren't, the outrage about this issue seems a little hypocritical.
I do not label believers "wacko" or "senile." Superstitious, perhaps, because I think religions are superstitions: residual beliefs held for reasons that are sociocultural rather than empirical, analytical or even introspective. But I'll just settle for "wrong." We're all wrong about lots of stuff. But I'm unafraid to characterize religious thinking as wrong, and to bring attention to its contradictions and (even more importantly) its contingencies, in appropriate settings. Many religious people consider any kind of critique like this a form of harassment or abuse. Ultimately, the modern defense of religion winds up being sentimental, after one cuts through the layers of theological sediment. And that sentimentality also informs humanism, which is, in its way, Christianity without God.
Pretty normal in Mississippi and Texas, I'm afraid.