I was actually trying to make a point about humans being self-centered and short-sighted with regard to our environmental stewardship and treatment of others.
Not all humans.. just this culture. There are still thousands of indigenous human cultures that live in 'balance' with the natural world around them - taking only what they need.
It is only the arrogance of THIS particular human culture, one of thousands, but one that has swallowed thousands of others, like the Borg, that leads to widespread resource consumption and waste production.
However, you can dream all you want but the remarks I've made are true. To not deal with them is to not deal with reality.
Very few people ever actually deal with reality. It's too harsh.
I have long since come to the conclusion that in some part of most humans' minds, this knowledge MUST be blocked out - to KNOW that in the end, everything that we will ever know or ever dream will fall to dust, would paralyze and immobilize most people. Merely getting through a single day requires not thinking about the long-term meaning (or lack thereof) of that time spent.
This is evidenced by how hard people fight against the idea that our existence truly has no existential meaning beyond that which we assign it - it is an unbearable idea to most. This is why so many need to believe in an external God that gives our existence meaning.
But I, like you, have always found that knowledge liberating. The dawning of that understanding freed me from my fear of failure, because I realized that the world truly is what we make of it - and what we make of it is all that can ever possibly matter to us. There is no objective meaning to our lives - but that just means we're free to define our own meaning, and that has possibilities beyond any infinity we can imagine.
Now I can do anything I choose to do, without fear, without even a second thought. Sometimes that means I have to think about my morality and ethics more than most, but I find that to be a more fulfilling experience than letting them be whatever my surroundings made them.
There's a saying I absolutely love, from Babylon 5, which embodies these ideas.. apologies if you don't like the show but I believe the quote is apt:
Lorien: "We were born naturally immortal." Ivanova: "That's impossible. Everything dies." Lorien: "Yes.. now. Once, we were kept in balance by birth rate. Few of us ever died, so few of us were ever born.
Then, I think the universe decided that to appreciate life - for there to be change, or growth - life had to be short.
To live on, as we have, is to leave behind joy, and love, and companionship - because we know it to be transitory. Of the moment. We know it will turn.. to ash.
Only those whose lives are brief can imagine that love is immortal.
You should embrace that remarkable illusion. It may be the greatest gift your race has ever received."
I have the same question. I've had this firefox session open for days and it's only using 83MB (ONLY, but.. eh). I've never had Firefox leak that much memory.. I simply don't understand what pages people are visiting that would cause that.
The wonderful folks at PositionIsEverything have resolved those problems. It's a pain in the royal ass to fix but definitely possible.
Since browser compliance testing is something I do when I build websites I'll need these instructions when I (unwillingly but necessarily) install IE7 on my machine. I have not done so yet because I don't want to test IE7 until it is essentially complete. No point in coding for a bug that will disappear on final release.
Hehe. Me, partisan? Please. Had they done anything - ANYTHING - that seemed like a good faith effort to avert 9/11, I wouldn't be on their case - even if 9/11 had still happened. But they did nothing. They didn't care. I simply do not understand how you can cast that as something 'partisan' or defend it in any way. I don't care WHO is in power or WHAT party does what.. I only care about the consequences of their actions (or inaction).
What COULD they have done? I have no idea. I do not have the position, I do not know what they know, and have not even one iota of an idea what capabilities the US intelligence and counter-intelligence community has. But then, that isn't my responsibility - it was hers.
Multiple reports released since 9/11 have clearly demonstrated we had more than enough intelligence to know what was going to happen - that in itself tells you the administration did something wrong.
I will be fair, though, and state that you can do EVERYTHING RIGHT.. and still fail.
That does not appear to be the case in this instance, however. From what we gather, Rice and Bush barely reacted to a large part of their intelligence community telling them something was coming. I simply do not fathom how one can defend that as "well what were they SUPPOSED to do?" Part of doing ANYTHING right in this case would have involved more than a brush-off from the US National Security Advisor and and complete ignorance on the part of the president.
The article itself contains the following statement:
Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden.
This at least suggests their hands were tied. Who knows what may have happened differently if that authority had been granted.
But if you ask the Question "did you get a report claiming 9/11 was going to happen 2 months before 9/11?" you could probably reply with hoestly and say "no". I'm not saying that more wasn't known but if what we know that was known is true, it didn't offer much of anything on the predictability of 9/11.
To be fair, you're probably right - most people would say 'no.'
Unfortunately, the United States Secretary of Defense does not have the luxury of saying 'no' when the Director of the CIA is telling you some kind of attack is imminent, despite your 'beliefs' to the contrary. To ignore that is total incompetence, pure and simple.
But the true measure of a person, or a country, is not in taking the easy way out, but in taking the right way, the hard way regardless of the cost.
Unfortunately, we're going to need alot of "a few good men" if we expect to dig ourselves out of this.. and unfortunately, it will probably mean the end of their political careers. If they believe it to be worth it, they'll do it anyway..
But I don't see any willing to destroy their careers to stand up for what's right.
Revolution needs much fewer people - I don't think that's realistic, either, though.
Eivind.
Case in point.. the American Revolutionary Army never had more than 10,000 troops. While only 33% of the population supported independence, vastly fewer were willing to fight for it -
And America still won.
Kinda puts the whole revolution idea into perspective. Granted alot has changed and the face of any such war these days would be much uglier than our ancestors could have imagined..
Yes the Republicans have successfully campaigned on the "politics of fear" platform, however isn't the American public intelligent and savvy enough to notice the bias and editorial slant of networks such as Fox News?
A few posts above, you posted the words "Live and let live."
Sure, so long as one chooses to live by your rules. How enlightened of you.
It's exactly the kind of thinking that has created the world we live in - everyone so bent and busy trying to force everyone else to live the way someone else tells them to.
The very ideas of liberty and freedom are founded upon making as few rules as possible - only the ones necessary to produce social cohesion sufficient to prevent society from falling apart. A loose alliance of individuals, so to speak. Forcing everyone to live one way never entered into it... so where did we get this "I'll let you live, so long as you live by my rules" come from?
And our country walked right into it, eyes wide open. Pathetic.
Terrorists by themselves have no power.. it takes people who use fear as a means to an end to give terrorism any power. And that's exactly what our current government has done.
Fight the terrorists indeed. Why not invite them to tea while they're at it.
Do we need to tell them that their ISP will slow down their MySpace if net neutrality isn't regulated?
Honestly?
Yes.
I am beginning to come to the conclustion that attempting to honestly educate the public is a fool's errand in the current day and age. We need to use the opposition's own tools against them: If they believe that propoganda will serve their purposes, then perhaps we need some propoganda of our own.
Self-governance is the only acceptable form of government. Too bad the species is too young to handle it responsibly.
Eh. Hm. Actually, our species is more than capable of it; our particular culture (a sub-group of the species) is not.
Indigenous cultures managed their affairs very well for tens of thousands of years before our culture came along. And in less than a planetary blink of an eye, we've spread across the planet and brought ourselves to the brink of destruction MORE than once.
It seems the problem isn't with the species (there are plenty of other human cultures to hold up as examples), but with our particular culture.
I wish I knew how to make this critism of modern life and politics [sic] constructive, but I don't.
If you could, it would be a solved problem, and informed public discourse would be possible.
That nobody seems to have figured out how to do that in hundreds of years should reassure you that your sense of helplessness is not an isolated event.
It is something that I imagine most Slashdotters run into in the "real world" when they attempt to explain this issue to their friends and family. For my own part, I get either dumb stares or "You're lying, nobody would ever do that."
Unfortunately, I am becoming more and more convinced that the future of our planet lies not in the optimistic hope of educating the public, but in degrees of propoganda. In a world where nearly every piece of information that is disseminated comes from a company wealthier than any human could ever be in 10,000 years, the idea of an educated populace is becoming laughable.
All that remains is a populace ruled by propoganda. What the content of that propoganda is, and what it leads to, is the question. Do we leave the propoganda in the hands of those who want the populace to be nothing but wage slaves? Or does the propoganda encourage people to stand up to their leaders and demand liberty?
What are the chances you're actually going to outsmart them and come to the proper conclusion (rather than the one they lead you to) unless you simply take the position that all advertisements are lies until you have the time to prove them otherwise?
Those chances can be improved dramatically the more educated you are about the subject.
For example, my knowing alot about Net Neutrality allows me to instantly see through the "Mumbo Jumbo" commercials put out by the cable companies, but I have very little critical thought about things like car commercials, being that I know very little about cars.
Agh, and that is part of why my username is what it is. Judgement is a necessary part of the human experience, but that doesn't mean we should just always shoot from the hip and hope we don't hit any innocent bystanders.
Time was, people would rely on the wisdom and judgement of their elders, but nowadays everyone believes themselves a couch expert on every subject just because "TV told me so." And in part, it's amazing how much is common knowledge now as a consequence of mass media and the electronic age.
But that brings with it a sense that you know alot more than you do [the general 'you'; there's no word for it in English..] and that's what our culture and our world are slamming our heads into more and more frequently.
For my own part , if I'm aware I don't know enough about something, I either won't comment on it or I'll try to learn about it. I certainly have my foibles, but I do try, rather than just spouting off about something I know nothing about. [and I hate that this sounds like bragging, but I'm just trying to say how I approach things] I learned a long time ago to have enough self respect to say "I don't know."
I am finally able to Meta Moderate. If this one shows up my on radar, I'll kill it:P That's a horrible mod. Should at least be +1, Interesting, if nothing else, but troll?
Slashdot Mirror
It is only the arrogance of THIS particular human culture, one of thousands, but one that has swallowed thousands of others, like the Borg, that leads to widespread resource consumption and waste production.
I have long since come to the conclusion that in some part of most humans' minds, this knowledge MUST be blocked out - to KNOW that in the end, everything that we will ever know or ever dream will fall to dust, would paralyze and immobilize most people. Merely getting through a single day requires not thinking about the long-term meaning (or lack thereof) of that time spent.
This is evidenced by how hard people fight against the idea that our existence truly has no existential meaning beyond that which we assign it - it is an unbearable idea to most. This is why so many need to believe in an external God that gives our existence meaning.
But I, like you, have always found that knowledge liberating. The dawning of that understanding freed me from my fear of failure, because I realized that the world truly is what we make of it - and what we make of it is all that can ever possibly matter to us. There is no objective meaning to our lives - but that just means we're free to define our own meaning, and that has possibilities beyond any infinity we can imagine.
Now I can do anything I choose to do, without fear, without even a second thought. Sometimes that means I have to think about my morality and ethics more than most, but I find that to be a more fulfilling experience than letting them be whatever my surroundings made them.
There's a saying I absolutely love, from Babylon 5, which embodies these ideas.. apologies if you don't like the show but I believe the quote is apt:
Lorien: "We were born naturally immortal."
Ivanova: "That's impossible. Everything dies."
Lorien: "Yes.. now. Once, we were kept in balance by birth rate. Few of us ever died, so few of us were ever born.
Then, I think the universe decided that to appreciate life - for there to be change, or growth - life had to be short.
To live on, as we have, is to leave behind joy, and love, and companionship - because we know it to be transitory. Of the moment. We know it will turn.. to ash.
Only those whose lives are brief can imagine that love is immortal.
You should embrace that remarkable illusion. It may be the greatest gift your race has ever received."
I have the same question. I've had this firefox session open for days and it's only using 83MB (ONLY, but.. eh). I've never had Firefox leak that much memory.. I simply don't understand what pages people are visiting that would cause that.
[sniffs around]
Oh man.. didn't help.. better open another window.
[/even worse joke]
The wonderful folks at PositionIsEverything have resolved those problems. It's a pain in the royal ass to fix but definitely possible.
Since browser compliance testing is something I do when I build websites I'll need these instructions when I (unwillingly but necessarily) install IE7 on my machine. I have not done so yet because I don't want to test IE7 until it is essentially complete. No point in coding for a bug that will disappear on final release.
Not pointing fingers or anything, not intending to flame or troll, but it's just.. sick.
Hehe. Me, partisan? Please. Had they done anything - ANYTHING - that seemed like a good faith effort to avert 9/11, I wouldn't be on their case - even if 9/11 had still happened. But they did nothing. They didn't care. I simply do not understand how you can cast that as something 'partisan' or defend it in any way. I don't care WHO is in power or WHAT party does what.. I only care about the consequences of their actions (or inaction).
Yeah, he changed it after the guy insulted him. I was trying to encourage him to change it back...
It used to say:
in all that I post
and all that I fail to post
I will try to see every side
of the issues at hand
People do kinda suck though. What was the point of the insult.
Multiple reports released since 9/11 have clearly demonstrated we had more than enough intelligence to know what was going to happen - that in itself tells you the administration did something wrong.
I will be fair, though, and state that you can do EVERYTHING RIGHT.. and still fail.
That does not appear to be the case in this instance, however. From what we gather, Rice and Bush barely reacted to a large part of their intelligence community telling them something was coming. I simply do not fathom how one can defend that as "well what were they SUPPOSED to do?" Part of doing ANYTHING right in this case would have involved more than a brush-off from the US National Security Advisor and and complete ignorance on the part of the president.
The article itself contains the following statement:
This at least suggests their hands were tied. Who knows what may have happened differently if that authority had been granted.
Unfortunately, the United States Secretary of Defense does not have the luxury of saying 'no' when the Director of the CIA is telling you some kind of attack is imminent, despite your 'beliefs' to the contrary. To ignore that is total incompetence, pure and simple.
Ignore the ideologue. I liked your sig, because it matches my own approach to things :) (thus my nik)
But I don't see any willing to destroy their careers to stand up for what's right.
And maybe that's the saddest part of all.
God how far we have fallen..
And America still won.
Kinda puts the whole revolution idea into perspective. Granted alot has changed and the face of any such war these days would be much uglier than our ancestors could have imagined..
No.
A few posts above, you posted the words "Live and let live."
Sure, so long as one chooses to live by your rules. How enlightened of you.
It's exactly the kind of thinking that has created the world we live in - everyone so bent and busy trying to force everyone else to live the way someone else tells them to.
The very ideas of liberty and freedom are founded upon making as few rules as possible - only the ones necessary to produce social cohesion sufficient to prevent society from falling apart. A loose alliance of individuals, so to speak. Forcing everyone to live one way never entered into it... so where did we get this "I'll let you live, so long as you live by my rules" come from?
Thank you.
And our country walked right into it, eyes wide open. Pathetic.
Terrorists by themselves have no power.. it takes people who use fear as a means to an end to give terrorism any power. And that's exactly what our current government has done.
Fight the terrorists indeed. Why not invite them to tea while they're at it.
Yes.
I am beginning to come to the conclustion that attempting to honestly educate the public is a fool's errand in the current day and age. We need to use the opposition's own tools against them: If they believe that propoganda will serve their purposes, then perhaps we need some propoganda of our own.
Indigenous cultures managed their affairs very well for tens of thousands of years before our culture came along. And in less than a planetary blink of an eye, we've spread across the planet and brought ourselves to the brink of destruction MORE than once.
It seems the problem isn't with the species (there are plenty of other human cultures to hold up as examples), but with our particular culture.
That nobody seems to have figured out how to do that in hundreds of years should reassure you that your sense of helplessness is not an isolated event.
It is something that I imagine most Slashdotters run into in the "real world" when they attempt to explain this issue to their friends and family. For my own part, I get either dumb stares or "You're lying, nobody would ever do that."
Unfortunately, I am becoming more and more convinced that the future of our planet lies not in the optimistic hope of educating the public, but in degrees of propoganda. In a world where nearly every piece of information that is disseminated comes from a company wealthier than any human could ever be in 10,000 years, the idea of an educated populace is becoming laughable.
All that remains is a populace ruled by propoganda. What the content of that propoganda is, and what it leads to, is the question. Do we leave the propoganda in the hands of those who want the populace to be nothing but wage slaves? Or does the propoganda encourage people to stand up to their leaders and demand liberty?
That remains to be seen. I think the EFF, for example, is beginning to catch on: public education does not work. Propoganda might.
For example, my knowing alot about Net Neutrality allows me to instantly see through the "Mumbo Jumbo" commercials put out by the cable companies, but I have very little critical thought about things like car commercials, being that I know very little about cars.
Agh, and that is part of why my username is what it is. Judgement is a necessary part of the human experience, but that doesn't mean we should just always shoot from the hip and hope we don't hit any innocent bystanders.
Time was, people would rely on the wisdom and judgement of their elders, but nowadays everyone believes themselves a couch expert on every subject just because "TV told me so." And in part, it's amazing how much is common knowledge now as a consequence of mass media and the electronic age.
But that brings with it a sense that you know alot more than you do [the general 'you'; there's no word for it in English..] and that's what our culture and our world are slamming our heads into more and more frequently.
For my own part , if I'm aware I don't know enough about something, I either won't comment on it or I'll try to learn about it. I certainly have my foibles, but I do try, rather than just spouting off about something I know nothing about. [and I hate that this sounds like bragging, but I'm just trying to say how I approach things] I learned a long time ago to have enough self respect to say "I don't know."
I wish more people would.
I am finally able to Meta Moderate. If this one shows up my on radar, I'll kill it :P That's a horrible mod. Should at least be +1, Interesting, if nothing else, but troll?
Comcast is showing tons ads against Net Neutrality in Maryland.