His comment about the uselessness of business degrees is spot on. I'm convinced that American corporate over-reliance on business degrees, and marketing, are amongst the biggest problems facing American corporations.
American corporations are saddled with a bunch of business majors who, for whatever reason, have been deemed to be the best suited to manage despite the fact that they barely understand the details of what their company actually does. They haven't worked in the trenches, they haven't actually been directly involved in the product or service but they're first in line to run things. This is a far cry from Asia where engineers and designers routinely are the ones who get promoted to management positions. It ensures they can make informed decisions and employees can't get away with BS. Managers in Asia can be just as self-centered, just as concerned about the next Mercedes they're going to buy. But they're also more likely to make the best choices for the company.
The second disaster is marketing. American companies seem to have adopted the attitude that you don't actually need a good product, you simply need to convince consumers you offer one. By the time the consumer realizes they've been had you have their money. And they've risen to have such power because of stupid suits who don't have enough confidence in the strength of their product. And marketing is entirely self-serving. It doesn't matter how wasteful a marketing campaign is a marketing department/agency will find a way to skew the data to claim it was actually a success. It's rather shocking how much money companies dump into marketing especially considering how low the response rate actually is.
This is not to say there aren't other issues. The cost of labor in the US is exceedingly high, and work ethic is crap. Couple that with entitlement culture and you've got real problems. And topping it all off we've got a government that mismanages and misdirects regulation. Instead of making decisions that are best for the well-being of the nation their policies almost always seem intended to pander to special interests or push certain agendas.
In fact, the reference I found on Wikipedia to that yellowcake, under the entry for Iraq War, maintains that the claims were false, if not an outright lie.
I don't know if yellowcake qualifies as a WMD, but I'd argue it shows that the intent was there to build these weapons. Whether that stuff justified the way is another argument all together.
Like sex. Look up almost anything related to sex and you'll find tons of gratuitous photos and illustrations. Search on something visually fascinating which should feature photos and routinely you're lucky if they've bothered to include a lone, crappy photo.
Good luck. Considering how dependent networks are on advertising revenue rest assured we'll have to suffer through advertising online just the same. And I'm sure they'll make it so that it can't be skipped. If anything, this technology will allow advertising to be more invasive.
Saying it's merely a document format doesn't mean much. You can do quite a lot with many document formats nowadays. PDFs aren't used only as a means is displaying text and images consistently. You can embed quite a lot of functionality into them. It could be argued that PDFs shouldn't permit that kind of functionality considering it opens up opportunities for exploits but then you could argue the same thing about any technological progress.
The problem is that there are people working just as hard, and perhaps harder, to find and create exploits are there are people working to stop them. It's possible I'll be proven wrong some day but I expect we're never going to see truly and completely secure platforms and it's not because of any ineptitude on the part of the original developers.
This moral equivalency is pure BS. Where are all the christian terrorists blowing themselves up and taking innocents with them in the name of their lord? Where are Christians in violent conflict with other people? Where are the Christians violently enforcing their religious edicts? Don't insult everyone's intelligence by suggesting some lone Christian shooting an abortion doctor is the same thing as Muslims blowing up, shooting or stoning dozens of people on a nearly weekly basis. And nevermind the persistent oppression.
And there's another important distinction. Most Christians will condemn a Christian murderer. Regardless of the intent of the act, wrong is wrong. The percentage of Muslim extremists might be low. But the percentage of those sympathetic is far higher. The thing to keep in mind is that while many Christians are so in name only many, if not the majority of Muslims, are quite devout. Most Christians could care less what others do. It's why we don't see violent protests whenever Christianity is insulted in some way or another, and Christianity is mocked routinely. Rest assured that wouldn't be the case if Christians were violent.
The problem isn't what's written in the Bible or Koran, it's the parts people have chosen to follow.
I find it ironic that while people are desperate to point out that not all Muslims aren't fundamentalist, and obvious fact which doesn't change the reality of the situation, they're quick to claim that all Christians are illiterate idiots who believe in Creationism.
We're talking about elementary schools here, not universities.
I don't recall ever having to pay for my text books in elementary or high school. But I did have to return the books at the end of the year.
That said, I agree that text books are seriously overpriced. So why isn't that addressed? Why are schools willing to overpay for books? Why are publishers so lavish with printing? We don't need these books printed on high quality paper stock in full color. Print them in black and white, on the cheapest paper they can find like I've seen in Asia. Text books are to learn, not to wow kids with pretty pictures.
That's a ridiculous statement you make considering the US spends more per student, by far, than any other country on Earth. The small city where I live spends more than the next highest country which is in Northern Europe. And it's not a little more, it's thousands more they spend. The city has had budget problems for decades now. A significant portion of the population is low-income.
The problem is that too many schools in the city are still crap. But the money ends up going to garbage. If it's not a gimmicky program then it's an overpaid administrator sucking up that money. These idiots hired some administrator from some big city. Her income is well over $250k a year and she's refused to forgo raises claiming she needs them for cost-of-living increases. And she's done next to nothing to improve the educational system in this city. Of course a huge part of the problem are irresponsible parents who don't discipline their kids and instill the value of education in them, so things are never so simple.
The problem with Americans, particularly when it comes to social programs, is that they think simply throwing money at the problem will fix it. When people start talking about needing money for schools what they actually mean is that teachers want significant pay increases and cushy benefits. I'd love to have the job security and generous benefits some teacher friends of mine enjoy. The money never goes to directly improving education for students. When it does trickle its way down too often it ends up being something stupid like these iPads.
How will these iPads improve education? They wont improve a thing. In fact, they're going to be a massive distraction. Kids already are easily distracted, they don't need yet another toy to make things worse. And given how careless they will be with these things schools are going to be replacing them every few months. Money flushed down the toilet.
I don't have a problem with such courses. As others have mentioned many courses of these types have been offered before. However, I've experienced firsthand that some of these courses are very light on substance and are devised by a self-serving professor who has a personal interest in the subject. That in and of itself wouldn't be a problem at all if the professor is using the subject matter to convey a deeper lesson, whether that be social implications, influences within the film industry, cinematography, etc. But I wouldn't be surprised if this class is little more than sitting around watching a bunch of movies in a popular genre. And management is supportive because the school can be marketed as cutting-edge, offering plenty of fun courses.
I never quite got the appeal of the zombie genre anyway. There have been a handful of decent zombie movies, but the vast majority of crap. A few offer some flimsy social commentary better conveyed in a more mature manner and the bulk of these movies are simply cashing in on a fad, merely copying what has already been done too many times before. There's enough to these genre that perhaps you could fill an essay, but I don't see how you could make a class out of it. This is the sort of thing a person could occupy themselves with on their leisure time; it's not really material for a university course.
Given that in place of a final paper they can write a script or draw storyboards I'm fairly certain this course doesn't offer anything compelling.
I call BS on that one. The guy who made that claim also makes a number of other absurd claims. For example: he claims to know who really planned the Portuguese revolution, Che Guevara's last words, who assassinated Kennedy, the truth about Lockerbie (whatever that is) and how Timothy McVeigh was merely a pawn. Oh yeah, and the truth behind Princess Diana's death.
But, sharing the same country of origin as yourself, I know full well that Europeans love conspiracy theories even more than Americans do. I'm amused and awestruck by the utterly absurd conspiracies my otherwise rational family members believe.
I fail to see how a straight dollar figure can be related directly to income. I'd say living expenses vs income has a far, far more profound effect on happiness.
Many, if not most people, have a tendency to live at the limits of their income. They get a raise and they go out and buy a new car. They get promoted and go out and buy a larger home. Or more likely, they aren't spending money on large one-time expenses, but many smaller ones. A more expensive mobile phone plan than they need along with a new phone every year, new clothing, maintaining an active nightlife, etc. These are the sorts of things that slip by unnoticed. What's another $20? $50? $100?
But before they know it they're right back at square one. They're "struggling" to get by because they don't have any money left over at the end of the month. A higher income has enabled them to own more stuff or go out more, but they're no happier. Of course, the higher the income, the longer it takes to reach that point.
Then there's the matter of where you live. $75k a year is meaningless when one region has a substantially higher cost of living than another. But if you're able to save money, if unexpected expenses aren't forcing you to reach for your credit card then chances are you're reasonably happy. I know people across a fairly good range of incomes and the ones who seem to be reasonably happy aren't facing significant, if any debt.
I find that atheists are the most obnoxious, elitist group of people of any faith. They carry themselves with this air of superiority like they've got the universe all figured out. Agnostics are far, far more open-minded. And yes, atheism is a faith. It's faith in the concept that there is no God.
These people love to blame religion for all the ills of the world. It's no different than this jerk blaming a game for his own addictive personality. People can get addicted to anything even work.
The fact is that even if everyone were atheists we'd still have wars, rejection of science and reason, oppression and any other social ill you can imagine. These are human failings not religious failings. Religion is merely a tool. Religion is what gives people justification; it's how people convince themselves they're right. But humans don't need religion to convince themselves they're right and everyone else is wrong. The perfect example? Atheism.
Religions have helped humans come up with explanations for why things happen, why the world is the way it is. But I think on a more fundamental level religion is a convenient method of conveying a code of morals. Clearly you can have morals without religion, but this facilitates the message and gives people something to strive for. It conveys an ideal. Of course humans also do a good job of corrupting everything they touch, but again that's not a failing inherent to religion.
When you look at any religion from this perspective they're good for humanity. What are the fundamentals? Don't kill, don't steal and care for the less fortunate. What's wrong with any of this?
Countless wars have been fought under the banner of religion. There have also been many more wars where religion has not been a motivating factor. Lets not be naive. The ultimate goal wasn't to impose religion. The goal is a drive for power, wealth and territory. Socioeconomic forces drive nations to war. Again, religion is used as the tool to justify wholesale murder and destruction. But even without religion they'd be fighting that war.
Want to be an atheist? That's perfectly acceptable. It's as acceptable and reasonable as someone choosing to be religious. But there's no need to revise history and make unfounded claims in order to convince yourself that you're in the right and somehow enlightened.
If you think buddhists don't believe in gods you either are stupid or severely misinformed. Not only do they believe in gods they believe in dozens and dozens of gods. I should know, I have in laws who are buddhists.
Like any religion Buddhism has countless sects. I'm sure there are some sects, especially the sort that seem to be popular in Hollywood, that are more secular in nature. Just like there are sects of Christianity that are drastically different from the more common forms.
I thought there was some technical limitation due to requirements on antenna size or problems with interference. I could be totally wrong about that because it's also my understanding that some German company, a few years ago, offered an MP3 player that did support AM radio.
It's a neat idea, although this particular implementation might not be ideal. I tend to start digging around for more information on the web regarding novels I've gotten particularly interested in. This might include background information, interpretations or artwork. However, I can't say I'd ever pay for this and I'm not interested in a social component at all. I'm wouldn't be compelled to follow someone and read their thoughts on novels I haven't read simply because I enjoyed what they had to say about this one.
I suppose a community like this would allow for users to add to the expanded universe. While it's interesting it's something I've never gotten into. I'd rather go to the source, the original creator. I find too much inconsistency, too many elements disruptive to canon and it tends to be too much to absorb. And I think writing, for a lot of people, is a personal thing. I've got my own vision of how things are, what should or shouldn't happen. If I were to add to a universe I've created I'd want it to come from me. I suppose the point at which I decided I was done with that universe then it would no longer be a problem.
For years I've had the idea of releasing novels, comics, etc in episodic form and allowing readers to guide the story. Basically at certain points they could vote on a few possible outcomes. It might make for an engaging experience, but it wont work if the author has a particular story they want to tell or an idea they want to convey.
Of course, a big problem is that too many people seem to think everything they find on the internet should be free. This stuff takes a lot of time and effort, not to mention the expense of having this stuff available online somewhere. There are creative ways to entice people. But if all the effort went into writing the book, why should I be expected to generate income from something like t-shirts or signed artwork? It would be a travesty is writers were forced into writing Harry Potter or Twilight style novels in order to be able to be able to make money. The sci-fi section of bookstores already seems to be shrinking, slowly absorbed by manga and bad mystery novels.
A communistic market wouldn't decide what's best for everyone. They would decide what's best for the State, what will ensure that they are able to maintain authority over the people. That may coincide with what's best for the people, but more often than not it doesn't. And, depending on the level of corruption, there will always be some in any human enterprise, they will also be motivated to make decisions based on what's best for the elites.
Even in cases where they may be convinced they're helping the people the end result might be worse for everyone. In Venezuela, for example, the government decided to set gasoline prices artificially low. Fortunately, they have plenty of their own oil so they managed to avoid the problem of rationing. Yaay! Everybody wins! Except that now traffic has become a nightmare because so many people are driving.
The best solutions seem to always pull from different schools of thought. Too many people nowadays seem to have this delusional idea that capitalism has failed and that heavy socialism or even outright communism will somehow fix everything. This despite the fact that history has demonstrated otherwise.
Pure free market/capitalism would almost certainly be a disaster in the long run as people find ways to exploit the system. I'm convinced an ideal system is capitalist, which acknowledges the competitive nature of humanity, but with socialist attributes, strategically applied, to prevent abuses and provide support. The trick is avoiding a bloated government bureaucracy that inevitably is driven to extend its power to sustain itself.
Looks to me like it's being done more for show, and perhaps ego, than for any practical reason. I certainly don't see it being any cheaper than just having the servers in some office building somewhere.
That would be nice but Americans have gotten too be too self-centered, from the CEO at the top to your some worker on the factory floor. Like everything else manned space exploration will likely end up being outsourced, even if indirectly, to the Chinese.
It's not a problem that they do it at all. The problem is that we're not trying for it with anything approaching the same kind of zeal.
If you think we've got population problems you clearly haven't been paying attention. East Asia, which has some of the highest population densities in the world also has among the lowest birth rates. The rate for China is lower than the US. Nations like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have among the lowest rates in the world. Most of Europe also has extremely low birth rates. If it weren't for immigration America's rate would probably be a lot lower than it is. I don't know if Europe still does it, but Japan's and Taiwan's governments have offered incentives to people who have children. What's the problem? If the trend continues they'll suffer dramatically in terms of talent and labor. And more importantly for governments they wont have enough people to help sustain social programs.
Fears of population explosions have so far proven to be unfounded. The nations which have the highest birthrates, namely African nations and South Asia also have high death rates. And there is the capability to sustain many more people on Earth than we have now. Despotic leaders, environmental issues and wars are the real problems facing more heavily populated nations.
What I find exceedingly obnoxious is when I do purchase something and for weeks afterwards I'll get promotions for similar things, if not the same exact altogether.
I'm curious to know how effective this sort of thing actually is. All those people in the marketing department and consultants will desperately insist it works. But given my own experiences and observations it just creates information overload and the vast majority of people end up ignoring most of what they say. Unfortunately, the very people who do marketing are the ones also supplying the statistics on whether it has been effective or not. They're not going to furnish information that renders them inessential. So they only disclose what seems to work and make some rather absurd suppositions.
There's no such thing as too much advertising to these guys. Expect things to get even more invasive.
I don't have a problem with nudity or profanity. I'd argue nudity and profanity is much less harmful than glorified violence. On the other hand, American culture suffers from this odd dichotomy of prudishness taking things way too far. A lot of people seem incapable of anything other than shocking and offensive entertainment. Americans seem to be the source of some of the most depraved content in the world when it comes to mainstream entertainment. It's like Americans have this desperate, immature need to prove they're "adults" by enjoying excessively violent, shocking and offensive and overly sexualized entertainment. It's like writers, directors and producers are comprised of wannabee iconoclasts. I'm not saying I can't enjoy this sort of thing, but simply that I don't need to be bombarded with it constantly. It's nice to experience entertainment with a bit more maturity.
For parents with children, like myself, the solution is simple: don't let them watch television or don't let them watch broadcast television. That way you're in total control of what they're watching. And better yet, they're not being bombarded with constant advertising, which I think is a far larger problem for society compared to any tv show which can easily be dismissed as fantasy. It's not like there's much of substance on television anyway. Kids should be occupying their time with other activities anyway. The last thing we need is to perpetuate this dependency on television for entertainment.
I have to say, zombie lore has gotten to be amongst the more obnoxious trends out there. I think the whole thing has pretty we been beaten to death long ago. But then, I never got the appeal anyway.
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His comment about the uselessness of business degrees is spot on. I'm convinced that American corporate over-reliance on business degrees, and marketing, are amongst the biggest problems facing American corporations.
American corporations are saddled with a bunch of business majors who, for whatever reason, have been deemed to be the best suited to manage despite the fact that they barely understand the details of what their company actually does. They haven't worked in the trenches, they haven't actually been directly involved in the product or service but they're first in line to run things. This is a far cry from Asia where engineers and designers routinely are the ones who get promoted to management positions. It ensures they can make informed decisions and employees can't get away with BS. Managers in Asia can be just as self-centered, just as concerned about the next Mercedes they're going to buy. But they're also more likely to make the best choices for the company.
The second disaster is marketing. American companies seem to have adopted the attitude that you don't actually need a good product, you simply need to convince consumers you offer one. By the time the consumer realizes they've been had you have their money. And they've risen to have such power because of stupid suits who don't have enough confidence in the strength of their product. And marketing is entirely self-serving. It doesn't matter how wasteful a marketing campaign is a marketing department/agency will find a way to skew the data to claim it was actually a success. It's rather shocking how much money companies dump into marketing especially considering how low the response rate actually is.
This is not to say there aren't other issues. The cost of labor in the US is exceedingly high, and work ethic is crap. Couple that with entitlement culture and you've got real problems. And topping it all off we've got a government that mismanages and misdirects regulation. Instead of making decisions that are best for the well-being of the nation their policies almost always seem intended to pander to special interests or push certain agendas.
Did you know that there were 550 metric tons of yellowcake taken from Iraq and sent to Canada? Of course not.
In fact, the reference I found on Wikipedia to that yellowcake, under the entry for Iraq War, maintains that the claims were false, if not an outright lie.
I don't know if yellowcake qualifies as a WMD, but I'd argue it shows that the intent was there to build these weapons. Whether that stuff justified the way is another argument all together.
Facts sure can be a pesky, can't they?
Like sex. Look up almost anything related to sex and you'll find tons of gratuitous photos and illustrations. Search on something visually fascinating which should feature photos and routinely you're lucky if they've bothered to include a lone, crappy photo.
Good luck. Considering how dependent networks are on advertising revenue rest assured we'll have to suffer through advertising online just the same. And I'm sure they'll make it so that it can't be skipped. If anything, this technology will allow advertising to be more invasive.
Saying it's merely a document format doesn't mean much. You can do quite a lot with many document formats nowadays. PDFs aren't used only as a means is displaying text and images consistently. You can embed quite a lot of functionality into them. It could be argued that PDFs shouldn't permit that kind of functionality considering it opens up opportunities for exploits but then you could argue the same thing about any technological progress.
The problem is that there are people working just as hard, and perhaps harder, to find and create exploits are there are people working to stop them. It's possible I'll be proven wrong some day but I expect we're never going to see truly and completely secure platforms and it's not because of any ineptitude on the part of the original developers.
This moral equivalency is pure BS. Where are all the christian terrorists blowing themselves up and taking innocents with them in the name of their lord? Where are Christians in violent conflict with other people? Where are the Christians violently enforcing their religious edicts? Don't insult everyone's intelligence by suggesting some lone Christian shooting an abortion doctor is the same thing as Muslims blowing up, shooting or stoning dozens of people on a nearly weekly basis. And nevermind the persistent oppression.
And there's another important distinction. Most Christians will condemn a Christian murderer. Regardless of the intent of the act, wrong is wrong. The percentage of Muslim extremists might be low. But the percentage of those sympathetic is far higher. The thing to keep in mind is that while many Christians are so in name only many, if not the majority of Muslims, are quite devout. Most Christians could care less what others do. It's why we don't see violent protests whenever Christianity is insulted in some way or another, and Christianity is mocked routinely. Rest assured that wouldn't be the case if Christians were violent.
The problem isn't what's written in the Bible or Koran, it's the parts people have chosen to follow.
I find it ironic that while people are desperate to point out that not all Muslims aren't fundamentalist, and obvious fact which doesn't change the reality of the situation, they're quick to claim that all Christians are illiterate idiots who believe in Creationism.
We're talking about elementary schools here, not universities.
I don't recall ever having to pay for my text books in elementary or high school. But I did have to return the books at the end of the year.
That said, I agree that text books are seriously overpriced. So why isn't that addressed? Why are schools willing to overpay for books? Why are publishers so lavish with printing? We don't need these books printed on high quality paper stock in full color. Print them in black and white, on the cheapest paper they can find like I've seen in Asia. Text books are to learn, not to wow kids with pretty pictures.
That's a ridiculous statement you make considering the US spends more per student, by far, than any other country on Earth. The small city where I live spends more than the next highest country which is in Northern Europe. And it's not a little more, it's thousands more they spend. The city has had budget problems for decades now. A significant portion of the population is low-income.
The problem is that too many schools in the city are still crap. But the money ends up going to garbage. If it's not a gimmicky program then it's an overpaid administrator sucking up that money. These idiots hired some administrator from some big city. Her income is well over $250k a year and she's refused to forgo raises claiming she needs them for cost-of-living increases. And she's done next to nothing to improve the educational system in this city. Of course a huge part of the problem are irresponsible parents who don't discipline their kids and instill the value of education in them, so things are never so simple.
The problem with Americans, particularly when it comes to social programs, is that they think simply throwing money at the problem will fix it. When people start talking about needing money for schools what they actually mean is that teachers want significant pay increases and cushy benefits. I'd love to have the job security and generous benefits some teacher friends of mine enjoy. The money never goes to directly improving education for students. When it does trickle its way down too often it ends up being something stupid like these iPads.
How will these iPads improve education? They wont improve a thing. In fact, they're going to be a massive distraction. Kids already are easily distracted, they don't need yet another toy to make things worse. And given how careless they will be with these things schools are going to be replacing them every few months. Money flushed down the toilet.
I don't have a problem with such courses. As others have mentioned many courses of these types have been offered before. However, I've experienced firsthand that some of these courses are very light on substance and are devised by a self-serving professor who has a personal interest in the subject. That in and of itself wouldn't be a problem at all if the professor is using the subject matter to convey a deeper lesson, whether that be social implications, influences within the film industry, cinematography, etc. But I wouldn't be surprised if this class is little more than sitting around watching a bunch of movies in a popular genre. And management is supportive because the school can be marketed as cutting-edge, offering plenty of fun courses.
I never quite got the appeal of the zombie genre anyway. There have been a handful of decent zombie movies, but the vast majority of crap. A few offer some flimsy social commentary better conveyed in a more mature manner and the bulk of these movies are simply cashing in on a fad, merely copying what has already been done too many times before. There's enough to these genre that perhaps you could fill an essay, but I don't see how you could make a class out of it. This is the sort of thing a person could occupy themselves with on their leisure time; it's not really material for a university course.
Given that in place of a final paper they can write a script or draw storyboards I'm fairly certain this course doesn't offer anything compelling.
I call BS on that one. The guy who made that claim also makes a number of other absurd claims. For example: he claims to know who really planned the Portuguese revolution, Che Guevara's last words, who assassinated Kennedy, the truth about Lockerbie (whatever that is) and how Timothy McVeigh was merely a pawn. Oh yeah, and the truth behind Princess Diana's death.
But, sharing the same country of origin as yourself, I know full well that Europeans love conspiracy theories even more than Americans do. I'm amused and awestruck by the utterly absurd conspiracies my otherwise rational family members believe.
I fail to see how a straight dollar figure can be related directly to income. I'd say living expenses vs income has a far, far more profound effect on happiness.
Many, if not most people, have a tendency to live at the limits of their income. They get a raise and they go out and buy a new car. They get promoted and go out and buy a larger home. Or more likely, they aren't spending money on large one-time expenses, but many smaller ones. A more expensive mobile phone plan than they need along with a new phone every year, new clothing, maintaining an active nightlife, etc. These are the sorts of things that slip by unnoticed. What's another $20? $50? $100?
But before they know it they're right back at square one. They're "struggling" to get by because they don't have any money left over at the end of the month. A higher income has enabled them to own more stuff or go out more, but they're no happier. Of course, the higher the income, the longer it takes to reach that point.
Then there's the matter of where you live. $75k a year is meaningless when one region has a substantially higher cost of living than another. But if you're able to save money, if unexpected expenses aren't forcing you to reach for your credit card then chances are you're reasonably happy. I know people across a fairly good range of incomes and the ones who seem to be reasonably happy aren't facing significant, if any debt.
I find that atheists are the most obnoxious, elitist group of people of any faith. They carry themselves with this air of superiority like they've got the universe all figured out. Agnostics are far, far more open-minded. And yes, atheism is a faith. It's faith in the concept that there is no God.
These people love to blame religion for all the ills of the world. It's no different than this jerk blaming a game for his own addictive personality. People can get addicted to anything even work.
The fact is that even if everyone were atheists we'd still have wars, rejection of science and reason, oppression and any other social ill you can imagine. These are human failings not religious failings. Religion is merely a tool. Religion is what gives people justification; it's how people convince themselves they're right. But humans don't need religion to convince themselves they're right and everyone else is wrong. The perfect example? Atheism.
Religions have helped humans come up with explanations for why things happen, why the world is the way it is. But I think on a more fundamental level religion is a convenient method of conveying a code of morals. Clearly you can have morals without religion, but this facilitates the message and gives people something to strive for. It conveys an ideal. Of course humans also do a good job of corrupting everything they touch, but again that's not a failing inherent to religion.
When you look at any religion from this perspective they're good for humanity. What are the fundamentals? Don't kill, don't steal and care for the less fortunate. What's wrong with any of this?
Countless wars have been fought under the banner of religion. There have also been many more wars where religion has not been a motivating factor. Lets not be naive. The ultimate goal wasn't to impose religion. The goal is a drive for power, wealth and territory. Socioeconomic forces drive nations to war. Again, religion is used as the tool to justify wholesale murder and destruction. But even without religion they'd be fighting that war.
Want to be an atheist? That's perfectly acceptable. It's as acceptable and reasonable as someone choosing to be religious. But there's no need to revise history and make unfounded claims in order to convince yourself that you're in the right and somehow enlightened.
If you think buddhists don't believe in gods you either are stupid or severely misinformed. Not only do they believe in gods they believe in dozens and dozens of gods. I should know, I have in laws who are buddhists.
Like any religion Buddhism has countless sects. I'm sure there are some sects, especially the sort that seem to be popular in Hollywood, that are more secular in nature. Just like there are sects of Christianity that are drastically different from the more common forms.
Keep in mind that his lawyer(s) are going to pocket the majority of that money. If they win.
What's with the Darwinwasracist tag? What is that all about and how is it relevant to the story?
I thought there was some technical limitation due to requirements on antenna size or problems with interference. I could be totally wrong about that because it's also my understanding that some German company, a few years ago, offered an MP3 player that did support AM radio.
It's a neat idea, although this particular implementation might not be ideal. I tend to start digging around for more information on the web regarding novels I've gotten particularly interested in. This might include background information, interpretations or artwork. However, I can't say I'd ever pay for this and I'm not interested in a social component at all. I'm wouldn't be compelled to follow someone and read their thoughts on novels I haven't read simply because I enjoyed what they had to say about this one.
I suppose a community like this would allow for users to add to the expanded universe. While it's interesting it's something I've never gotten into. I'd rather go to the source, the original creator. I find too much inconsistency, too many elements disruptive to canon and it tends to be too much to absorb. And I think writing, for a lot of people, is a personal thing. I've got my own vision of how things are, what should or shouldn't happen. If I were to add to a universe I've created I'd want it to come from me. I suppose the point at which I decided I was done with that universe then it would no longer be a problem.
For years I've had the idea of releasing novels, comics, etc in episodic form and allowing readers to guide the story. Basically at certain points they could vote on a few possible outcomes. It might make for an engaging experience, but it wont work if the author has a particular story they want to tell or an idea they want to convey.
Of course, a big problem is that too many people seem to think everything they find on the internet should be free. This stuff takes a lot of time and effort, not to mention the expense of having this stuff available online somewhere. There are creative ways to entice people. But if all the effort went into writing the book, why should I be expected to generate income from something like t-shirts or signed artwork? It would be a travesty is writers were forced into writing Harry Potter or Twilight style novels in order to be able to be able to make money. The sci-fi section of bookstores already seems to be shrinking, slowly absorbed by manga and bad mystery novels.
If only things were so simply and perfect. When has regulation lived up to what is actually promised?
A communistic market wouldn't decide what's best for everyone. They would decide what's best for the State, what will ensure that they are able to maintain authority over the people. That may coincide with what's best for the people, but more often than not it doesn't. And, depending on the level of corruption, there will always be some in any human enterprise, they will also be motivated to make decisions based on what's best for the elites.
Even in cases where they may be convinced they're helping the people the end result might be worse for everyone. In Venezuela, for example, the government decided to set gasoline prices artificially low. Fortunately, they have plenty of their own oil so they managed to avoid the problem of rationing. Yaay! Everybody wins! Except that now traffic has become a nightmare because so many people are driving.
The best solutions seem to always pull from different schools of thought. Too many people nowadays seem to have this delusional idea that capitalism has failed and that heavy socialism or even outright communism will somehow fix everything. This despite the fact that history has demonstrated otherwise.
Pure free market/capitalism would almost certainly be a disaster in the long run as people find ways to exploit the system. I'm convinced an ideal system is capitalist, which acknowledges the competitive nature of humanity, but with socialist attributes, strategically applied, to prevent abuses and provide support. The trick is avoiding a bloated government bureaucracy that inevitably is driven to extend its power to sustain itself.
Looks to me like it's being done more for show, and perhaps ego, than for any practical reason. I certainly don't see it being any cheaper than just having the servers in some office building somewhere.
That would be nice but Americans have gotten too be too self-centered, from the CEO at the top to your some worker on the factory floor. Like everything else manned space exploration will likely end up being outsourced, even if indirectly, to the Chinese.
It's not a problem that they do it at all. The problem is that we're not trying for it with anything approaching the same kind of zeal.
If you think we've got population problems you clearly haven't been paying attention. East Asia, which has some of the highest population densities in the world also has among the lowest birth rates. The rate for China is lower than the US. Nations like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have among the lowest rates in the world. Most of Europe also has extremely low birth rates. If it weren't for immigration America's rate would probably be a lot lower than it is. I don't know if Europe still does it, but Japan's and Taiwan's governments have offered incentives to people who have children. What's the problem? If the trend continues they'll suffer dramatically in terms of talent and labor. And more importantly for governments they wont have enough people to help sustain social programs.
Fears of population explosions have so far proven to be unfounded. The nations which have the highest birthrates, namely African nations and South Asia also have high death rates. And there is the capability to sustain many more people on Earth than we have now. Despotic leaders, environmental issues and wars are the real problems facing more heavily populated nations.
What I find exceedingly obnoxious is when I do purchase something and for weeks afterwards I'll get promotions for similar things, if not the same exact altogether.
I'm curious to know how effective this sort of thing actually is. All those people in the marketing department and consultants will desperately insist it works. But given my own experiences and observations it just creates information overload and the vast majority of people end up ignoring most of what they say. Unfortunately, the very people who do marketing are the ones also supplying the statistics on whether it has been effective or not. They're not going to furnish information that renders them inessential. So they only disclose what seems to work and make some rather absurd suppositions.
There's no such thing as too much advertising to these guys. Expect things to get even more invasive.
I don't have a problem with nudity or profanity. I'd argue nudity and profanity is much less harmful than glorified violence. On the other hand, American culture suffers from this odd dichotomy of prudishness taking things way too far. A lot of people seem incapable of anything other than shocking and offensive entertainment. Americans seem to be the source of some of the most depraved content in the world when it comes to mainstream entertainment. It's like Americans have this desperate, immature need to prove they're "adults" by enjoying excessively violent, shocking and offensive and overly sexualized entertainment. It's like writers, directors and producers are comprised of wannabee iconoclasts. I'm not saying I can't enjoy this sort of thing, but simply that I don't need to be bombarded with it constantly. It's nice to experience entertainment with a bit more maturity.
For parents with children, like myself, the solution is simple: don't let them watch television or don't let them watch broadcast television. That way you're in total control of what they're watching. And better yet, they're not being bombarded with constant advertising, which I think is a far larger problem for society compared to any tv show which can easily be dismissed as fantasy. It's not like there's much of substance on television anyway. Kids should be occupying their time with other activities anyway. The last thing we need is to perpetuate this dependency on television for entertainment.
I have to say, zombie lore has gotten to be amongst the more obnoxious trends out there. I think the whole thing has pretty we been beaten to death long ago. But then, I never got the appeal anyway.