Re:Positivism is dead, long live postivism!
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 1
You are missing the point and trying to equate "Trust" with "Faith".
I "trust" people who use the scientific method because I know their work is being checked and duplicated by others.
I have "faith" that my friends will be honest and kind to me in the future. This can't be proven with observation and facts. My "faith" in my friends is not subject to the scientific method.
The "bell curve" is a well-established, observed and duplicated feature of populations. In any population some will be strongly affected, many will be affected in an average manner, and a few will be barely affected or unaffected.
The engineer doesn't have "faith" that metal will have a certain strength. Some random individual did not just assert it's strength based on nothing. The metal was tested many times and the range of its breaking strength was recorded. The engineer knows that if they were to perform the test themselves, they would observe results in the same range. Part of the reason for this is that they have actually done this many times in labs in school where they duplicated of past experiments and their results were consistent with past results.
Faith is NOT a critical assumption. It is an emotional assumption. It has nothing to do with critical thinking. Every revelation is personal. If I see god while in the bathroom and came out and told you, there is no way you can tell the difference between me and a lunatic.
I agree that we do not understand what is going on inside yet. We have many experiments to run and results to record. Then those experiments have to be run independently. Then we can draw certain conclusions from the facts gathered in those experiments. Those conclusions will suggest further experiments to either verify or disprove them. Over time our knowledge will continue to increase.
Re:Positivism is dead, long live postivism!
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 1
Sigh.
Take PCP in measured doses over a few months and you will become paranoid and delusional.
It doesn't just work on "some" portion of society- it works pretty universally on anyone who takes it with ordinary bell curve variation.
The same way that motrin releaves pain.
The same way that viagra gives you a stiffy.
Underlying MOST people's dreams that their "soul" will exist past the death of the physical body is a presumption that memories and their personality will be attached to it. As we gain more and more evidence that memories and personality are based on physical constructs it becomes clear that if a "soul" exists at all, this is probably not the case. So even if your "soul" is saved, "YOU" won't exist.
The reason we are learning is because of the scientific method. It is not a religion but a procedure. It goes like this.
I speculate something might be true based on observations.
I test that speculation and share my results with others. (and here is the key part).
Independent of me, they are able to produce the same results.
Two parts- TESTABLE, REPRODUCABLE.
Faith doesn't pass those tests. That doesn't mean faith is bad- but it DOES mean faith is not a good method for dealing with testable and reproducable things. When I get into an elevator, I would prefer that it be built based on scientific principles rather than religious principles.
How about creating vision? That's already been done for blind people.
How about hearing? That's been done for deaf people.
Not sure about taste or touch.
What you feel is an electrical input to your brain. Once the inputs are located, they can send them signals and generate those sensations.
That's not speculation- it's already been done.
The brain is a machine- it is complicated. But when you consider how much we have learned in the last 30 years, it is astonishing that people disregard what will will learn in the next 30 years much less the next 300 years.
Re:Slightly Misleading
on
Mapping the Mind
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The above review is wrong on several points.
There are studies that show we can definately tell the general nature of what a person is thinking because certain parts of the brain only engage if the person is lying, remembering, feeling happy, laughing, tasting something, etc.
If the default areas of your brain are damaged, other parts will be reprogrammed to take over in some cases.
There are also chemicals which can definately induce particular moods- notably including the spiritual state.
I think it bothers religious people because they associate the "soul" with the personality. The fact is all of our minds and personality are there in the physical brains. I can make you a paranoid delusional murder with the right series of drug treatments. I can make you unable to experience particular sensations and emotions with targeted brain surgery. The soul, if it exists, is supposed to transend the physical form so an aspect of your personality that I can manipulate is probably not part of your soul.
The problem is...
in an age with tens of thousands of songs,
they think a fair price for their service is a dollar a song.
The closest deal they have to your deal is about 15 dollars a month for being able to listen to satellite radio in the genre (but not the song) of your choice.
Like you I never bought CD's before (maybe 12 in 20 years) and I don't buy them any less because of p2p. The last CD I bought was from Magnatune and I recommend folks check them out.
But writing and to some extent music just like programming is a mental exercise and there are just millions of people capable of doing it at a very high quality for very low pay. Only be extreme practices are they able to maintain their monopoly in this day and age.
1) Only play unpatented formats.
2) Make sure utilities are available to translate to those unpatented formats but don't own them. Just release them free out into the wilds of the internet where they will never entirely disappear despite efforts to squash them.
3) Encourage all encoders to only use open formats.
---
Within the next 5-10 years, you will not be able to get content short of video taping it off a screen. They are going to have it completely locked down. It won't be because of technology per se but technology combined with severe legal penalties for circumventing that technology.
They will send encoded audio and video streams that will be decoded as close as possible to the point where it becomes audeo and video. Picture a solid state combination speaker code and decoding device impossible to separate or patch into.
"This will take 12 months to roll out properly"
Management set the deadline at 3 months.
This is typical of every company I've ever worked at.
There is also the issue of giving an accurate estimate before the users know what they want.
I am most happy with the RUP process for delivering timely projects that meet user expectations.
The screens on PSP have a fairly low pixel count.
If a large screen has more than 3 pixels bad, you are going to return it. The psp screens are tiny. They shouldn't have dead pixels. Sony probably didn't save much money doing this either. Raise the price 15 bucks and only ship with good screens.
I would like to last 70 years (as in doesn't degrade).
I.e. I don't want it to become cloudy, split into pieces, or fade as long as I store it properly.
I would like to to be readable for at least that long as well. (as in new standards have to be backwards compatible that long).
i.e. I put a dvd into a dvd player in 30 years, I expect it to play my old 9.4gig dvds as well as the 80 terrabyte dvd's I'll be using then.
I wish slashdot respected normal paragraph marks. I often forget to enter the 's to break things up.
Anyway. Sorry for the double post.
Sure you might be filled with anger or lust. But until the last 15 years you did not have so many television shows and movies showing you exactly how to act out those urges. You can see during prime time people having sex under a blanket.
I had no CLUE how to have sex until I was about 15. A lot didn't get any information until later than that. Now you can't prevent your 12 year olds from knowing the mechanics.
Likewise, you are instructed in a hundred different ways to kill people effectively and how to dispose of the bodies and what techniquest might be used to try to stop you or catch you. Just for example, I know I won't fall for good cop, bad cop. I'll confuse the crime scene by collecting other peoples dna and I'll use rubber gloves.
Likewise, I know the most effective killing cuts with a knife are under the armpits and inside the thigh near the groin. If I want to commit suicide, I'll cut my wrists VERTICALLY not horizontally, but I would probably use a car and carbon monoxide.
And as far as deviant behavior went, you just didn't know about all the various wierd sexual practices-- now dominatrices are used for humor on shows kids watch. I'm all for deviant behavior- just let's keep it for adults and away from the kids. This information just wasn't out there for your average teenager back in the 70's when I was growing up.
And that is not even getting into "modeling" behavior based on people who live in imaginary worlds where they can do all kinds of stupid things without the consequences they have in the real world. I think we hit the kids with too much information too fast before they are finished maturing. The brain isn't even finished growing until sometime after they turn 18. But it applies to adults too. There is just a lot more information on how to act out your urges than their used to be.
Sure you might be filled with anger or lust.
But until the last 15 years you did not have so many television shows and movies showing you exactly how to act out those urges.
You can see during prime time people having sex under a blanket. I had no CLUE how to have sex until I was about 15. A lot didn't get any information until later than that.
Now you can't prevent your 12 year olds from knowing the mechanics.
Likewise, you are instructed in a hundred different ways to kill people effectively and how to dispose of the bodies and what techniquest might be used to try to stop you or catch you.
Just for example, I know I won't fall for good cop, bad cop. I'll confuse the crime scene by collecting other peoples dna and I'll use rubber gloves. Likewise, I know the most effective killing cuts with a knife are under the armpits and inside the thigh near the groin. If I want to commit suicide, I'll cut my wrists VERTICALLY not horizontally, but I would probably use a car and carbon monoxide.
And as far as deviant behavior went, you just didn't know about all the various wierd sexual practices-- now dominatrices are used for humor on shows kids watch. I'm all for deviant behavior- just let's keep it for adults and away from the kids.
This information just wasn't out there for your average teenager back in the 70's when I was growing up. And that is not even getting into "modeling" behavior based on people who live in imaginary worlds where they can do all kinds of stupid things without the consequences they have in the real world.
I think we hit the kids with too much information too fast before they are finished maturing. The brain isn't even finished growing until sometime after they turn 18.
But it applies to adults too. There is just a lot more information on how to act out your urges than their used to be.
His take was simple--Americans and French are the only two cultures that think their culture is the best and want to impose it (in some fashion) on everyone else.
I know the chinese have a firm belief their culture is the best. I'm not sure if they wish to impose it on others or not tho. But they have a pretty strong racial superiority complex based in part on the length of time they have been civilized.
I think this analogy might better illustrate what is going on.
There are three car companies.
Big "M" motors makes 94% of the cars in the world.
Big "L" motors makes hobbyist cars for about 3% of the market.
Big "A" motors makes sports cars for 3% of the market.
Big "M" motors introduces a new kind of stereo in all their cars that plays a new kind of music disk. It is a reasonably high quality stereo. Before long the only kind of music disks sold for -any- stereo are big "M" stereos. Not just in cars but also in the home, your boom box, everything.
What happened was that big "M" motors used their CAR monopoly to create a new STEREO monopoly.
How quickly folks forget.
B5 looked like it was going to be cancelled after season 4 so JMS filmed the real ending and then it was renewed for another season. Season 5 was really just a tacked on thing after his original series ending.
So they basically crammed the original 5 seasons into 4 seasons and then got renewed and kinda tacked stuff on. The big revelation about the aliens being afraid to leave was just unbelievably stupid after watching it religiously for 3.9 seaons.
I will probably never watch an episode of B5 again in my life. Poisoned the entire series for me.
I use secure passwords for all sites including this one.
It's easy.
I can even figure out what my password is on a site I haven't visited in months by looking at the site.
I use a part related to the site plus a random string of letters plus a number. These three elements are assembled to construct a valid password.
The only level higher security I go is two random strings plus a rotating number from an unused old telephone number of a friend of mine that I no longer know.
If they want to crack it, they will sniff me anyway.
when in fact the far more important act is the selection of a candidate for whom to vote.
and the candidates are selected before we can vote for them these days.
choose candidate puppet A or candidate puppet B.
Either way you choose, the choice was made before you even hand a chance.
I would dare say that a printing press is more reliable at producing perfect copies than most p2p applications.
You must not be using the p2p services that I use.
And text files are not stored in lossy formats.
Here is how it plays out.
You have a left-wing contrasted with a centrist or even a left-leaning centrist. Or a hard right is put on and made to look like a fool because the host lets the left winger talk over them but cuts off the right-winger. Or they ask an incredibly complex question and give 30 seconds to answer it.
I regularly scoff outloud in my car at conservative talk radio bias in the mornings driving to work. They can be for or against the same issue depending on if conservatives are backing it currently (recent example- senate filibusters blocking judicial nominees).
I also listen to BBC (on radio pacifica in the morning drive time) and find it to have left-wing bias. We had the "fairness" doctrine here in the US for decades and it resulted in a huge amount of left-biased news.
It's like what is going on at Harvard right now. Free speech doesn't exist when you say things the left do not approve of.
Incorrect assumption.
The fact that you do not listen to "right wing" shows as well as "left wing" shows means you probably are unable to recognize the left wing tendencies of the BBC.
The BBC can produce a series of honest pieces on American vices which are none-the-less biased because they completely omitted appropriate counterpoints of American virtues.
Just because talk radio or Fox say something doesn't mean it's not true. You really need to listen to all sides instead of just your slanted but supposedly unbiased news sources.
NPR is extremely hard left. I listen to them regularly. Some of what they say is unpleasant but true. However, I know that if the US did exactly the right thing, they would STILL find a negative slant like "US ruins natives lives by giving them free money" or some crap like that.
BBC has a systematic anti-american slant by virtue of the news it chooses to broadcast and the news it chooses to supress. They occasionally broadcast pro american stories.
Fox and conservative talk radio have a systematic pro-american slant by virtue of the news it chooses to broadcast and the news it chooses to supress. They occasionally broadcast anti-Bush stories. They -rarely- broadcast anti-american stories (tho they did a pretty balanced job on the abbu-grabe (sp?) stuff).
As I said, I listen to all the sources from hard left Radio Pacifica to soft left BBC, to "yuppie left" NPR, to conservative Fox to right-wing talk radio. I do some additional reading and then make up my own mind about what I want to support and believe in.
Slashdot Mirror
You are missing the point and trying to equate "Trust" with "Faith".
I "trust" people who use the scientific method because I know their work is being checked and duplicated by others.
I have "faith" that my friends will be honest and kind to me in the future. This can't be proven with observation and facts. My "faith" in my friends is not subject to the scientific method.
The "bell curve" is a well-established, observed and duplicated feature of populations. In any population some will be strongly affected, many will be affected in an average manner, and a few will be barely affected or unaffected.
The engineer doesn't have "faith" that metal will have a certain strength. Some random individual did not just assert it's strength based on nothing. The metal was tested many times and the range of its breaking strength was recorded. The engineer knows that if they were to perform the test themselves, they would observe results in the same range. Part of the reason for this is that they have actually done this many times in labs in school where they duplicated of past experiments and their results were consistent with past results.
Faith is NOT a critical assumption. It is an emotional assumption. It has nothing to do with critical thinking. Every revelation is personal. If I see god while in the bathroom and came out and told you, there is no way you can tell the difference between me and a lunatic.
I agree that we do not understand what is going on inside yet. We have many experiments to run and results to record. Then those experiments have to be run independently. Then we can draw certain conclusions from the facts gathered in those experiments. Those conclusions will suggest further experiments to either verify or disprove them. Over time our knowledge will continue to increase.
Sigh.
Take PCP in measured doses over a few months and you will become paranoid and delusional.
It doesn't just work on "some" portion of society- it works pretty universally on anyone who takes it with ordinary bell curve variation.
The same way that motrin releaves pain.
The same way that viagra gives you a stiffy.
Underlying MOST people's dreams that their "soul" will exist past the death of the physical body is a presumption that memories and their personality will be attached to it. As we gain more and more evidence that memories and personality are based on physical constructs it becomes clear that if a "soul" exists at all, this is probably not the case. So even if your "soul" is saved, "YOU" won't exist.
The reason we are learning is because of the scientific method. It is not a religion but a procedure. It goes like this.
I speculate something might be true based on observations.
I test that speculation and share my results with others. (and here is the key part).
Independent of me, they are able to produce the same results.
Two parts- TESTABLE, REPRODUCABLE.
Faith doesn't pass those tests. That doesn't mean faith is bad- but it DOES mean faith is not a good method for dealing with testable and reproducable things. When I get into an elevator, I would prefer that it be built based on scientific principles rather than religious principles.
I'm sure the patent office will approve whatever the paper was talking about.
Hmmm. That would be the next approach. Randomly generated patent applications which you can use to sue things that seem close to them years later.
Hmm
How about creating vision? That's already been done for blind people.
How about hearing? That's been done for deaf people.
Not sure about taste or touch.
What you feel is an electrical input to your brain. Once the inputs are located, they can send them signals and generate those sensations.
That's not speculation- it's already been done.
The brain is a machine- it is complicated. But when you consider how much we have learned in the last 30 years, it is astonishing that people disregard what will will learn in the next 30 years much less the next 300 years.
The above review is wrong on several points. There are studies that show we can definately tell the general nature of what a person is thinking because certain parts of the brain only engage if the person is lying, remembering, feeling happy, laughing, tasting something, etc. If the default areas of your brain are damaged, other parts will be reprogrammed to take over in some cases. There are also chemicals which can definately induce particular moods- notably including the spiritual state. I think it bothers religious people because they associate the "soul" with the personality. The fact is all of our minds and personality are there in the physical brains. I can make you a paranoid delusional murder with the right series of drug treatments. I can make you unable to experience particular sensations and emotions with targeted brain surgery. The soul, if it exists, is supposed to transend the physical form so an aspect of your personality that I can manipulate is probably not part of your soul.
When they finally get this technology mastered some company that did no work will show up with a patent and ask for their cut.
The problem is...
in an age with tens of thousands of songs,
they think a fair price for their service is a dollar a song.
The closest deal they have to your deal is about 15 dollars a month for being able to listen to satellite radio in the genre (but not the song) of your choice.
Like you I never bought CD's before (maybe 12 in 20 years) and I don't buy them any less because of p2p. The last CD I bought was from Magnatune and I recommend folks check them out.
But writing and to some extent music just like programming is a mental exercise and there are just millions of people capable of doing it at a very high quality for very low pay. Only be extreme practices are they able to maintain their monopoly in this day and age.
I use them all the time to make change for people who pay with $3 bills. Sheesh... some people!
and you won't HAVE to sell government sites to the highest bidders.
Criminy it gets irritating the way government is getting into bed with business these days.
1) Only play unpatented formats. 2) Make sure utilities are available to translate to those unpatented formats but don't own them. Just release them free out into the wilds of the internet where they will never entirely disappear despite efforts to squash them. 3) Encourage all encoders to only use open formats. --- Within the next 5-10 years, you will not be able to get content short of video taping it off a screen. They are going to have it completely locked down. It won't be because of technology per se but technology combined with severe legal penalties for circumventing that technology. They will send encoded audio and video streams that will be decoded as close as possible to the point where it becomes audeo and video. Picture a solid state combination speaker code and decoding device impossible to separate or patch into.
These do not run on my system unless I choose to let them run.
The important thing was to GET the contract and then work out the details.
When I first started, I lost a lot of opportunities to others who quoted 1 week for a 4 week project and then took 4 weeks to do it.
And management bit EVERY TIME. It's like they have that short term memory problem from "50 First Dates" and "Memento."
"This will take 12 months to roll out properly" Management set the deadline at 3 months. This is typical of every company I've ever worked at. There is also the issue of giving an accurate estimate before the users know what they want. I am most happy with the RUP process for delivering timely projects that meet user expectations.
The screens on PSP have a fairly low pixel count. If a large screen has more than 3 pixels bad, you are going to return it. The psp screens are tiny. They shouldn't have dead pixels. Sony probably didn't save much money doing this either. Raise the price 15 bucks and only ship with good screens.
I would like to last 70 years (as in doesn't degrade). I.e. I don't want it to become cloudy, split into pieces, or fade as long as I store it properly. I would like to to be readable for at least that long as well. (as in new standards have to be backwards compatible that long). i.e. I put a dvd into a dvd player in 30 years, I expect it to play my old 9.4gig dvds as well as the 80 terrabyte dvd's I'll be using then.
I wish slashdot respected normal paragraph marks. I often forget to enter the
's to break things up.
Anyway. Sorry for the double post.
Sure you might be filled with anger or lust. But until the last 15 years you did not have so many television shows and movies showing you exactly how to act out those urges. You can see during prime time people having sex under a blanket.
I had no CLUE how to have sex until I was about 15. A lot didn't get any information until later than that. Now you can't prevent your 12 year olds from knowing the mechanics.
Likewise, you are instructed in a hundred different ways to kill people effectively and how to dispose of the bodies and what techniquest might be used to try to stop you or catch you. Just for example, I know I won't fall for good cop, bad cop. I'll confuse the crime scene by collecting other peoples dna and I'll use rubber gloves.
Likewise, I know the most effective killing cuts with a knife are under the armpits and inside the thigh near the groin. If I want to commit suicide, I'll cut my wrists VERTICALLY not horizontally, but I would probably use a car and carbon monoxide.
And as far as deviant behavior went, you just didn't know about all the various wierd sexual practices-- now dominatrices are used for humor on shows kids watch. I'm all for deviant behavior- just let's keep it for adults and away from the kids. This information just wasn't out there for your average teenager back in the 70's when I was growing up.
And that is not even getting into "modeling" behavior based on people who live in imaginary worlds where they can do all kinds of stupid things without the consequences they have in the real world. I think we hit the kids with too much information too fast before they are finished maturing. The brain isn't even finished growing until sometime after they turn 18. But it applies to adults too. There is just a lot more information on how to act out your urges than their used to be.
Sure you might be filled with anger or lust. But until the last 15 years you did not have so many television shows and movies showing you exactly how to act out those urges. You can see during prime time people having sex under a blanket. I had no CLUE how to have sex until I was about 15. A lot didn't get any information until later than that. Now you can't prevent your 12 year olds from knowing the mechanics. Likewise, you are instructed in a hundred different ways to kill people effectively and how to dispose of the bodies and what techniquest might be used to try to stop you or catch you. Just for example, I know I won't fall for good cop, bad cop. I'll confuse the crime scene by collecting other peoples dna and I'll use rubber gloves. Likewise, I know the most effective killing cuts with a knife are under the armpits and inside the thigh near the groin. If I want to commit suicide, I'll cut my wrists VERTICALLY not horizontally, but I would probably use a car and carbon monoxide. And as far as deviant behavior went, you just didn't know about all the various wierd sexual practices-- now dominatrices are used for humor on shows kids watch. I'm all for deviant behavior- just let's keep it for adults and away from the kids. This information just wasn't out there for your average teenager back in the 70's when I was growing up. And that is not even getting into "modeling" behavior based on people who live in imaginary worlds where they can do all kinds of stupid things without the consequences they have in the real world. I think we hit the kids with too much information too fast before they are finished maturing. The brain isn't even finished growing until sometime after they turn 18. But it applies to adults too. There is just a lot more information on how to act out your urges than their used to be.
His take was simple--Americans and French are the only two cultures that think their culture is the best and want to impose it (in some fashion) on everyone else.
I know the chinese have a firm belief their culture is the best. I'm not sure if they wish to impose it on others or not tho. But they have a pretty strong racial superiority complex based in part on the length of time they have been civilized.
Your analogy is invalid.
I think this analogy might better illustrate what is going on.
There are three car companies.
Big "M" motors makes 94% of the cars in the world.
Big "L" motors makes hobbyist cars for about 3% of the market.
Big "A" motors makes sports cars for 3% of the market.
Big "M" motors introduces a new kind of stereo in all their cars that plays a new kind of music disk. It is a reasonably high quality stereo. Before long the only kind of music disks sold for -any- stereo are big "M" stereos. Not just in cars but also in the home, your boom box, everything.
What happened was that big "M" motors used their CAR monopoly to create a new STEREO monopoly.
How quickly folks forget. B5 looked like it was going to be cancelled after season 4 so JMS filmed the real ending and then it was renewed for another season. Season 5 was really just a tacked on thing after his original series ending. So they basically crammed the original 5 seasons into 4 seasons and then got renewed and kinda tacked stuff on. The big revelation about the aliens being afraid to leave was just unbelievably stupid after watching it religiously for 3.9 seaons. I will probably never watch an episode of B5 again in my life. Poisoned the entire series for me.
I use secure passwords for all sites including this one. It's easy. I can even figure out what my password is on a site I haven't visited in months by looking at the site. I use a part related to the site plus a random string of letters plus a number. These three elements are assembled to construct a valid password. The only level higher security I go is two random strings plus a rotating number from an unused old telephone number of a friend of mine that I no longer know. If they want to crack it, they will sniff me anyway.
when in fact the far more important act is the selection of a candidate for whom to vote.
and the candidates are selected before we can vote for them these days.
choose candidate puppet A or candidate puppet B.
Either way you choose, the choice was made before you even hand a chance.
I would dare say that a printing press is more reliable at producing perfect copies than most p2p applications. You must not be using the p2p services that I use. And text files are not stored in lossy formats.
Here is how it plays out. You have a left-wing contrasted with a centrist or even a left-leaning centrist. Or a hard right is put on and made to look like a fool because the host lets the left winger talk over them but cuts off the right-winger. Or they ask an incredibly complex question and give 30 seconds to answer it. I regularly scoff outloud in my car at conservative talk radio bias in the mornings driving to work. They can be for or against the same issue depending on if conservatives are backing it currently (recent example- senate filibusters blocking judicial nominees). I also listen to BBC (on radio pacifica in the morning drive time) and find it to have left-wing bias. We had the "fairness" doctrine here in the US for decades and it resulted in a huge amount of left-biased news. It's like what is going on at Harvard right now. Free speech doesn't exist when you say things the left do not approve of.
Incorrect assumption. The fact that you do not listen to "right wing" shows as well as "left wing" shows means you probably are unable to recognize the left wing tendencies of the BBC. The BBC can produce a series of honest pieces on American vices which are none-the-less biased because they completely omitted appropriate counterpoints of American virtues. Just because talk radio or Fox say something doesn't mean it's not true. You really need to listen to all sides instead of just your slanted but supposedly unbiased news sources. NPR is extremely hard left. I listen to them regularly. Some of what they say is unpleasant but true. However, I know that if the US did exactly the right thing, they would STILL find a negative slant like "US ruins natives lives by giving them free money" or some crap like that. BBC has a systematic anti-american slant by virtue of the news it chooses to broadcast and the news it chooses to supress. They occasionally broadcast pro american stories. Fox and conservative talk radio have a systematic pro-american slant by virtue of the news it chooses to broadcast and the news it chooses to supress. They occasionally broadcast anti-Bush stories. They -rarely- broadcast anti-american stories (tho they did a pretty balanced job on the abbu-grabe (sp?) stuff). As I said, I listen to all the sources from hard left Radio Pacifica to soft left BBC, to "yuppie left" NPR, to conservative Fox to right-wing talk radio. I do some additional reading and then make up my own mind about what I want to support and believe in.