Newsflash: Different people do things outdoors differently than you.
I love spending time away from the city, in various national parks, beaches, etc. I'll hike all day, cook my food outside, but once it's dark, and there's only so much more sitting around the fire to be done, I like to sleep indoors and I enjoy relaxing with television. I'm not an RV kinda guy, but that's what motels are for. Just because you want to cut yourself off entirely from the world doesn't mean everyone does.
To further that, something I calculated when Enterprise went off the air:
Now that Star Trek's over, it's interesting to see exactly how much Star Trek there is (canon only, add 660 minutes/11 hours if you include The Animated Series):
Movies:
The Motion Picture: 132 minutes The Wrath of Khan: 113 minutes The Search for Spock: 105 minutes The Voyage Home: 119 minutes The Final Frontier: 107 minutes The Undiscovered Country: 113 minutes Generations: 118 minutes First Contact: 106 minutes Insurrection: 103 minutes Nemesis: 116 minutes
Episodes:
The Original Series: 79 (3713 minutes @ 47 minutes/episode) The Next Generation: 178 (8010 minutes @ 45 minutes/episode) Deep Space Nine: 176 (7920 minutes @ 45 minutes/episode) Voyager: 172 (7740 minutes @ 45 minutes/episode) Enterprise: 98 (4116 minutes @ 42 minutes/episode)
It's cute that you think there's a significant difference between the two parties.
It's cuter that people get modded up for repeating this nonsense whenever there's a political discussion. The differences aren't as remarkable as larger party differences in other countries, but to say there's no "significant difference" is absurd, unless you don't consider things such as rights to abortion, rights to marry who you want and freedom from religion important.
(Yes, I realize there are democrats against the above things. But the party's platforms spell out clear differences).
No, the Libertarian Party has ballot status...that's about it. According to this piece from USA Today last year, there were about 55 million registered Republicans and about 72 million registered Democrats. Wikipedia tells me there are 200,000 registered Libertarians. Now, they do run more candidates than all other parties combined, but I don't think they even have anyone in any state legislatures right now.
http://www.ballot-access.org/2006/070106.html#11 has some different total registration numbers (that USA Today article was the best I could find on short notice), but it tells the same story. Even the Green and Constitution parties have more registered members. You't think with the way the Republicans have been operating the last 6 years that there's be a bigger swell with the libertarians, but they continue to be only a minor blip with pretty decent internet marketing.
Some would argue that any business profits are a form of exploitation. I think there's plenty of exploitation in business, but in the free (and sorta free) markets, it's gonna happen - there are going to be winners and losers. All business issues aside, philanthropy is a nice way to allow private organizations to direct where their money goes.
I tend to fall on the more socialist side of things in terms of "the government needs to provide for the people", but somehow expecting the masses to fund projects like wikipedia via the government is absurd - it never would have gotten off the ground. Wikipedia is cool enough to get some big money (especially tech) behind it, if the push is there from the leadership. But somehow complaining about the unfairness of business and taxes really has nothing to do with it.
I can't believe we're all honestly arguing about 4,000 year old myths and debating the details of stories told through oral tradition, then written down and translated repeatedly, all about events that are logically inconsistent and contain amazing claims that have never been substantiated.
There are surely a few elements of truth in the stories, but the idea of taking any of it literally, much less as proof of all existence, is the sign of a gross ignorance or mental deficiency.
Then don't watch it, and leave the rest of us to enjoy the humor that I think will likely ensue.
Whether Star Trek, Star Wars, Futurama or soemthing else, I've never understood why people think their experience with a piece of popular culture is ruined if other people read/watch new material.
That's fine. I want new music, old music I forgot I liked, old music I never heard/appreciated the first time, and an large variety of stations and content that's not music. I like my own music collection, too, but there's much more to satellite radio than stuff I already have.
Oh, and my "ridiculous contract" is like $6/month. I hardly have any cheaper content subscriptions.
Re:Replacing the electoral college
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
My solution is to have all Americans votes counted equally. California has 15,837,108 registered voters, and gets 55 electoral votes. That breaks down to each vote being determined by 287,947 people. Wyoming has 257,715 registered voters, and gets 3 electoral votes. That's 85,905 people per vote - those voters have considerable more sway - about 3 1/3 times - than we do here in California. How is that fair?
Another glaring problem with the system is that most states work on the "all or nothing" principal - in 2004 Kerry got 54.4% of California Votes, and Bush got 44.4%. However, Kerry got all 55 electoral votes. Things tend to average out over the 50 states, but like we saw in 2000, sometimes the popular vote winner isn't the electoral vote winner. Do you consider that fair?
Thirdly, while it's unlikely, it's possible for someone to win by winning just the 11 most populous states. And since all those states give the total of electoral votes to the candidate getting the majority of popular votes, the president, in theory, could be elected by just over half the voters in 11 states, even if every other vote went to another candidate. Don't you think that's pretty messed up?
That's sad that it's the end of the Sega-produced game era, but one reason the Dreamcast is so popular is that it's quite hackable, plays CDs also, and has a lot of user support. I use mine mainly to emulate older console systems like the NES, and it works great for that with CDs I burned myself. I don't see the hobby market for the Dreamcast going away any time soon.
Re:Replacing the electoral college
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 1
There are a LOT of problems with the electoral college - mostly that voters in some low-population states have votes worth much more than voters like me in California. That alone is reason enough to get rid of it for me.
Rather than this, I'd rather see a standard of truth applied to non-opinion mass media...Make them cite their numbers, and post the credentials of their "experts", and make them admit to errors of fact that appear on their broadcasts.
The problem here is that you then have to have a group, government or otherwise, to decide on whether media orgs are following a "standard of truth", and that leaves you with the same problems you've got now.
People forget that media companies are generally private companies - they can choose to report on what they want, from the angles they want, and give things the level of coverage they want. Luckily for us, there are thousands of these companies, each competing for your eyes and ears. While many are owned by the same parent companies, many many others are not, and emerging technologies are making more and more small-time operations into well respected and wide spread sources.
Typically I think the "let the market decide" approach doesn't work well in a complex business system, but with media news, I think it's perfect. You'll have companies that cater to a small audience, those looking for the masses, and some will apply their own fairness doctrines. I much prefer this to setting some sort of "standard" for truth that simply won't work.
How many opposing viewpoints should we present? Just one? Just popular ones? Should this be true for everything? I'm sure you can find people who believe gravity is nonsense, that the holocaust never happened, and who think algebra is satanic. Do we teach all these things, too? Do we spend time in science classes explaining the origin theories of EVERY world religion?
No.
I wasn't in the classroom for the screenings, but I'm willing to believe that the film was used as a basis for discussion on the topic - that's how just about every film I saw in school was used. If this isn't true, then that's a problem with the teacher, not the material. This sounds like a case of nutjob parents, but the fact that the district sided with them is scary.
I agree 100% with you. The problem is that the people who need to hear this aren't going to listen, no matter what. Anyone who can willfully ignore the most basic evidence of Earth's biological and geologic past (not just claim ignorance) has an agenda devoted to maintaining that ignorance.
I used to think either pointing out the "obvious" or engaging people of faith could get them away from their myths and cult-like behavior, but I've now resolved that I'll just have to make sure they don't get into power. I tend to be a pretty optimistic guy, but on this, I don't think there's much you can do to sway them.
But you still have it. One important part of archiving involves moving your data to newer media when you think the old media will become impossible to read. This won't solve all long term problems, certainly, but moving all that data to hard drives, DVDs and Tape Drives will make the next time you have to do this much easier, since next decade you'll only need to access 10 year old media instead of 20-30 year old media.
(IANAA - I am not an archivist, but I do work in an archives library for a media organization)
Paper can hold up - we have proof of that in centuries-old paper. But when you look at the percentage of paper that's survived the last few thousand years compared to a) the amount of paper produced and b) the amount of information lost, it's staggering.
There's no one answer, but rather a set of keys that'll help. These include regular backups, widely adopted standards, multiple backup formats, important backups on more durable media, and inclusion of metadata instructions for reading the data.
Very little will defend against total annihilation of a nuclear or asteroid sort, a technological hiatus (where things can degrade), or not working to do all the above things. But I'd have better hopes for my data kept as above compared to even well maintained paper.
Outing gay Republicans who have been activly fighting for and pushing an agenda of hate toward gays, however, I have NO problem with. Hypocrisy on a level that influences the law and well-being of Americans certainly has a place as a national story, needs discussion, and warrents this.
We've been using cloth diapers for my daughter since she was born (she's 4 months old now). The service (weekly pickups of dirty diapers and dropoffs of new ones) is actually less than the name brand disposable diapers. Even with the cost being above the non-name brand varieties, I like that I'm only contributing to the waste water problem, not the landfill problem.
Admitidly there were a lot of injuries, especially to one kid. Just about every day he ended up in a puddle of tears. Playing tackle football at lunch time is one of my best memories from elementary school.
So are you a bully, or a total asshole? Let me know if I've misread you.
As mentioned by a couple posters above, while this is a radical overreaction, games like tag and dodgeball are an excuse by bullies to enact serious injuries on other kids and have an excuse to fall back on. The games themselves should continue to be played, but they need to be supervised.
Slashdot Mirror
Flickr also does a thousand other wonderful things, so I can forgive it for using Yahoo!'s maps instead of Google's.
Newsflash: Different people do things outdoors differently than you.
I love spending time away from the city, in various national parks, beaches, etc. I'll hike all day, cook my food outside, but once it's dark, and there's only so much more sitting around the fire to be done, I like to sleep indoors and I enjoy relaxing with television. I'm not an RV kinda guy, but that's what motels are for. Just because you want to cut yourself off entirely from the world doesn't mean everyone does.
To further that, something I calculated when Enterprise went off the air:
Now that Star Trek's over, it's interesting to see exactly how much Star Trek there is (canon only, add 660 minutes/11 hours if you include The Animated Series):
Movies:
The Motion Picture: 132 minutes
The Wrath of Khan: 113 minutes
The Search for Spock: 105 minutes
The Voyage Home: 119 minutes
The Final Frontier: 107 minutes
The Undiscovered Country: 113 minutes
Generations: 118 minutes
First Contact: 106 minutes
Insurrection: 103 minutes
Nemesis: 116 minutes
Episodes:
The Original Series: 79 (3713 minutes @ 47 minutes/episode)
The Next Generation: 178 (8010 minutes @ 45 minutes/episode)
Deep Space Nine: 176 (7920 minutes @ 45 minutes/episode)
Voyager: 172 (7740 minutes @ 45 minutes/episode)
Enterprise: 98 (4116 minutes @ 42 minutes/episode)
Movies Total: 1132 minutes (18 hours, 52 minutes)
Episodes Total: 31499 minutes (524 hours, 59 minutes)
Grand Total: 32631 minutes (543 hours, 51 minutes)
That's 22 days, 15 hours and 51 minutes of Star Trek. Not bad...
It's cute that you think there's a significant difference between the two parties.
It's cuter that people get modded up for repeating this nonsense whenever there's a political discussion. The differences aren't as remarkable as larger party differences in other countries, but to say there's no "significant difference" is absurd, unless you don't consider things such as rights to abortion, rights to marry who you want and freedom from religion important.
(Yes, I realize there are democrats against the above things. But the party's platforms spell out clear differences).
Libertarian Part is a major party...
No, the Libertarian Party has ballot status...that's about it. According to this piece from USA Today last year, there were about 55 million registered Republicans and about 72 million registered Democrats. Wikipedia tells me there are 200,000 registered Libertarians. Now, they do run more candidates than all other parties combined, but I don't think they even have anyone in any state legislatures right now.
http://www.ballot-access.org/2006/070106.html#11 has some different total registration numbers (that USA Today article was the best I could find on short notice), but it tells the same story. Even the Green and Constitution parties have more registered members. You't think with the way the Republicans have been operating the last 6 years that there's be a bigger swell with the libertarians, but they continue to be only a minor blip with pretty decent internet marketing.
Your utopia is nice. Too bad it doesn't exist.
Some would argue that any business profits are a form of exploitation. I think there's plenty of exploitation in business, but in the free (and sorta free) markets, it's gonna happen - there are going to be winners and losers. All business issues aside, philanthropy is a nice way to allow private organizations to direct where their money goes.
I tend to fall on the more socialist side of things in terms of "the government needs to provide for the people", but somehow expecting the masses to fund projects like wikipedia via the government is absurd - it never would have gotten off the ground. Wikipedia is cool enough to get some big money (especially tech) behind it, if the push is there from the leadership. But somehow complaining about the unfairness of business and taxes really has nothing to do with it.
I can't believe we're all honestly arguing about 4,000 year old myths and debating the details of stories told through oral tradition, then written down and translated repeatedly, all about events that are logically inconsistent and contain amazing claims that have never been substantiated.
There are surely a few elements of truth in the stories, but the idea of taking any of it literally, much less as proof of all existence, is the sign of a gross ignorance or mental deficiency.
Then don't watch it, and leave the rest of us to enjoy the humor that I think will likely ensue.
Whether Star Trek, Star Wars, Futurama or soemthing else, I've never understood why people think their experience with a piece of popular culture is ruined if other people read/watch new material.
That's fine. I want new music, old music I forgot I liked, old music I never heard/appreciated the first time, and an large variety of stations and content that's not music. I like my own music collection, too, but there's much more to satellite radio than stuff I already have.
Oh, and my "ridiculous contract" is like $6/month. I hardly have any cheaper content subscriptions.
My solution is to have all Americans votes counted equally. California has 15,837,108 registered voters, and gets 55 electoral votes. That breaks down to each vote being determined by 287,947 people. Wyoming has 257,715 registered voters, and gets 3 electoral votes. That's 85,905 people per vote - those voters have considerable more sway - about 3 1/3 times - than we do here in California. How is that fair?
Another glaring problem with the system is that most states work on the "all or nothing" principal - in 2004 Kerry got 54.4% of California Votes, and Bush got 44.4%. However, Kerry got all 55 electoral votes. Things tend to average out over the 50 states, but like we saw in 2000, sometimes the popular vote winner isn't the electoral vote winner. Do you consider that fair?
Thirdly, while it's unlikely, it's possible for someone to win by winning just the 11 most populous states. And since all those states give the total of electoral votes to the candidate getting the majority of popular votes, the president, in theory, could be elected by just over half the voters in 11 states, even if every other vote went to another candidate. Don't you think that's pretty messed up?
That's sad that it's the end of the Sega-produced game era, but one reason the Dreamcast is so popular is that it's quite hackable, plays CDs also, and has a lot of user support. I use mine mainly to emulate older console systems like the NES, and it works great for that with CDs I burned myself. I don't see the hobby market for the Dreamcast going away any time soon.
There are a LOT of problems with the electoral college - mostly that voters in some low-population states have votes worth much more than voters like me in California. That alone is reason enough to get rid of it for me.
Why is this modded "Informative"?
You're thinking of Tony Alleyne, who designed his apartment in grand Trek style.
Also, just to nitpick, have you ever watched Star Trek? It's "transporter", not "teleporter".
First, I agree with most of your post.
Rather than this, I'd rather see a standard of truth applied to non-opinion mass media...Make them cite their numbers, and post the credentials of their "experts", and make them admit to errors of fact that appear on their broadcasts.
The problem here is that you then have to have a group, government or otherwise, to decide on whether media orgs are following a "standard of truth", and that leaves you with the same problems you've got now.
People forget that media companies are generally private companies - they can choose to report on what they want, from the angles they want, and give things the level of coverage they want. Luckily for us, there are thousands of these companies, each competing for your eyes and ears. While many are owned by the same parent companies, many many others are not, and emerging technologies are making more and more small-time operations into well respected and wide spread sources.
Typically I think the "let the market decide" approach doesn't work well in a complex business system, but with media news, I think it's perfect. You'll have companies that cater to a small audience, those looking for the masses, and some will apply their own fairness doctrines. I much prefer this to setting some sort of "standard" for truth that simply won't work.
Nobody better tell T-Rex!
How many opposing viewpoints should we present? Just one? Just popular ones? Should this be true for everything? I'm sure you can find people who believe gravity is nonsense, that the holocaust never happened, and who think algebra is satanic. Do we teach all these things, too? Do we spend time in science classes explaining the origin theories of EVERY world religion?
No.
I wasn't in the classroom for the screenings, but I'm willing to believe that the film was used as a basis for discussion on the topic - that's how just about every film I saw in school was used. If this isn't true, then that's a problem with the teacher, not the material. This sounds like a case of nutjob parents, but the fact that the district sided with them is scary.
I agree 100% with you. The problem is that the people who need to hear this aren't going to listen, no matter what. Anyone who can willfully ignore the most basic evidence of Earth's biological and geologic past (not just claim ignorance) has an agenda devoted to maintaining that ignorance.
I used to think either pointing out the "obvious" or engaging people of faith could get them away from their myths and cult-like behavior, but I've now resolved that I'll just have to make sure they don't get into power. I tend to be a pretty optimistic guy, but on this, I don't think there's much you can do to sway them.
But you still have it. One important part of archiving involves moving your data to newer media when you think the old media will become impossible to read. This won't solve all long term problems, certainly, but moving all that data to hard drives, DVDs and Tape Drives will make the next time you have to do this much easier, since next decade you'll only need to access 10 year old media instead of 20-30 year old media.
(IANAA - I am not an archivist, but I do work in an archives library for a media organization)
Paper can hold up - we have proof of that in centuries-old paper. But when you look at the percentage of paper that's survived the last few thousand years compared to a) the amount of paper produced and b) the amount of information lost, it's staggering.
There's no one answer, but rather a set of keys that'll help. These include regular backups, widely adopted standards, multiple backup formats, important backups on more durable media, and inclusion of metadata instructions for reading the data.
Very little will defend against total annihilation of a nuclear or asteroid sort, a technological hiatus (where things can degrade), or not working to do all the above things. But I'd have better hopes for my data kept as above compared to even well maintained paper.
Outing gay Republicans who have been activly fighting for and pushing an agenda of hate toward gays, however, I have NO problem with. Hypocrisy on a level that influences the law and well-being of Americans certainly has a place as a national story, needs discussion, and warrents this.
These guys would disagree.
We've been using cloth diapers for my daughter since she was born (she's 4 months old now). The service (weekly pickups of dirty diapers and dropoffs of new ones) is actually less than the name brand disposable diapers. Even with the cost being above the non-name brand varieties, I like that I'm only contributing to the waste water problem, not the landfill problem.
Admitidly there were a lot of injuries, especially to one kid. Just about every day he ended up in a puddle of tears. Playing tackle football at lunch time is one of my best memories from elementary school.
So are you a bully, or a total asshole? Let me know if I've misread you.
As mentioned by a couple posters above, while this is a radical overreaction, games like tag and dodgeball are an excuse by bullies to enact serious injuries on other kids and have an excuse to fall back on. The games themselves should continue to be played, but they need to be supervised.
Except that mail is also accepted at my home, at the post office, at the remaining blue boxes, many people's workplaces, etc. I won't worry.
"XI" is 11. Thanks for playing.
There was plenty of good Trek after they killed Spock, even with many of the same people in the production crew.
That said, I dunno if the new movie will be any good, I'd rather see the Federation in the 27th-29th centuries.