I don't know anyone named Charge, but I know more than a few Bills. Unfortunately I don't have enough bills in my wallet. Never did care for the Buffalo Bills.
I don't know why people bother reading a bunch of made up crap...
I haven't been as startled by anything in Slashdot in quite some time. Human society has always been built around stories. I'm curious if you feel this way just about things you read, or if you apply the "real things only" directive to TV, movies, and music as well.
Sticking to the facts excludes a huge swath of cultural artifacts, from pretty much all of recent popular music to the majority of television programming to almost all of the movies shown in theaters.
It would be an interesting experiment to try to exclude all non-factual media for a month. Of course there's the legitimate question of what constitutes "real things that actually happen," but even if we leave the debate over subjective/objective reality to the philosophers, I suspect it would be difficult to pull off even for a month.
You'll be targeted by the sharpshooters either way. Upgrade the system and they'll complain that you should cater to the lynx-using crowd (all five of 'em), and so avoid the necessity of an upgrade. Don't upgrade it and they'll complain that the site doesn't load like greased lightning. Again, a pure text, no graphics site would fix all your problems, they'll say.
Then there will be the sharpshooters who will feign disinterest. Nategoose, for example, will say: "How does this affect my life?" as if he could take Slashdot or leave it.
This is all just proof that those who actually get their hands dirty and create something wildly successful will always incur the wrath of a few cranks.
However, looking at the history of the RIAA's lobbying efforts, it's extremely likely that we'll soon be seeing a law that criminalizes making copyrighted files available.
The RIAA has been going after consumers for many years now, and they've been almost completely unsuccessful in their efforts. They've also been pushing for years to get Congress to let the RIAA call the shots on P2P, again without success.
Big Media has been successful in getting copyright's duration extended to infinity and beyond, but they have not been able to get Congress to go nearly as far beyond that as they'd like.
Basically Congress has said it's fine for the RIAA to go after consumers, but as soon as they start making life difficult for Internet content providers, they're not going to side with the RIAA. It's obvious that the music industry is the past and the Internet industry is the present, and Congress knows this.
Apple legal isn't going to let this stand. Even IF everything is legit, they won't have the money to defend themselves against Apple.
If this one-man wonder of a company totally screws up, which is likely, it will just reinforce the notion in consumer's minds that the best purveyor of Macs is *drumroll* Apple.
gee, i wonder how much fox news and cnn omitted of the whole tibet issue and what twisted image they are painting of china to make you think like this.
I don't get my news from the idiot box. As for Chinese bloggers expressing themselves, that's great. My point was that the government only allows bloggers to express themselves when their views coincide with the government's interests.
Allowing one side of a debate to be heard isn't freedom of speech. It's manipulation of speech.
Good question. The short answer is that the Lamaist (Buddhist) theocracy is very cruel and inhumane.
You obviously cherry-picked from the Parenti page, which is lengthy. First, the focus of the page is on the *history* of Tibetan Buddhism, not on what it is now. He points out that while many in the West see "old Tibet" as some sort of wonderful place, the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy was authoritarian and cruel. The specific quote you pulled was from an encounter with a Tibetan in the 1960s.
This is also the same man who has written: "The dismemberment and mutilation of Yugoslavia was part of a concerted policy initiated by the United States and the other Western powers in 1989," as part of a larger conspiracy in which the South Slavs seem to have played no part in the war and atrocities that caused so much destruction and horror. If the US government holds an official position, you can expect Parenti's to be in direct opposition to that position, regardless of the particulars.
Parenti's job as a social critic is to criticize, to poke holes, and to hold himself in opposition to the existing social order in the United States. That's a good thing, but that doesn't make him an unbiased source of information. It makes him one voice out of many.
Interestingly enough, that's what this entire thread is about. It's about expression of opinions. Funny isn't it, that Chinese citizens get to express themselves about issues like the recent unrest in Tibet, but you don't hear much from Tibetan bloggers in China?
Sampling Chinese blog and media views on Tibet would be like sampling US blogs and media just after the Iraq War started. It was all pretty rah-rah and gung-ho then. The Chinese are no different.
You're so right on the money. After all, the American and Chinese media and blogosphere are both equally open to diverse views. It's not like the Chinese government controls mass media or the Internet in China!
I for one am excited and happy that so many Chinese bloggers have been able to finally puncture the information controls set up by their government. Now we can finally hear the true voices of China, free from propagandistic manipulation, free from oversight by the Great Firewall of China, and free to say whatever they want about the Tibetan Troublemakers!
The Chinese government has been far too soft on the Tibetan Troublemakers. Now that the government has finally allowed the true voices of China to be heard, the government will no longer be allowed to coddle and protect those violent, dangerous Tibetan thugs!
With the voices of the people forcing the Chinese government to respond to the evil that the Tibetan thugs represent, we'll finally see just how powerful true Chinese democracy can be!
It is shameful to suggest that any of the spontaneous outpouring of disbelief and anger by ordinary Chinese citizens has anything to do with the government's control of news outlets, or with the government's Internet filtering apparatus. Shameful!
I fail to see how trivial statistics such as this where the only thing being compared is the color of a persons skin matter.
It's not trivial if you're the one being discriminated against. Discrimination takes many forms, and is often unconscious. But the effects are cumulative. Pile "trivial statistics" on each other and after a while you'll see the pattern.
The reason you find skepticism in any industry for the capabilities of a colored person is because of the bang-up job the so-called 'civil rights leaders' have done yelling and screaming about how minorities cannot achieve anything without assistance.
It is rather easy to forget about racism when you're white. We like to imagine that there are no racial biases in operation when we get a job or are accepted into a group, but white people, and white males in particular are constantly receiving the benefits of racial bias.
Racism exists, whether we believe it does or not. There is no particular industry to blame, but we live in a society that still makes it more difficult for African-Americans to compete, and the effects of unequal treatment in the past don't just vanish overnight.
As just one example, conduct even the most rudimentary research on housing policy in America and you'll find that the US government systematically denied African-Americans the opportunity to buy housing in "good" areas of major American cities (meaning white areas) after WW II, which led to lower property values for African-Americans. Even after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, it's been an uphill battle for African-Americans who want to move into high-value white areas.
There are a wide variety of other indicators of racial bias in hiring decisions, pay, and so on. It doesn't sit well with white people who would like to pretend that racism has been conquered, and that we all operate on a level playing field, but racism is still with us. It's there staring you in the face if you care to see it.
Bubble and recession at the same time? Uh... this is just one company buying a domain name for $2.6M. Taken in isolation this information tells us nothing other than the fact that one company thought that particular domain name was worth $2.6M.
Besides, no bubble brings all prices sky high, and no recession ever brings all pricing to the floor. Whatever the larger economic picture, there will always be companies taking risks and companies playing it safe.
Political bullshit, makes no sense. This is a financial problem.
Make no mistake, it sucks that we have to talk about this. But it had to be done.
Since you're apparently more of an expert on this than Ben Bernanke (who spent much of his career studying the Great Depression), let's hear what you would've done.
Three things:
Accomplished economists are disagreeing about whether bailing out Bear Stearns was a good idea for the long term. Most of them agree that it was a good short term move, but they are divided on the long term ramifications. The Fed did more than just move quickly to bail out Bear Stearns. It rewrote the book on how it operates.
Attempting to separate politics from economics is a pipe dream. How the economy is managed (or not managed) is inherently political. It's not math. It's human behavior.
Studying the Great Depression does not inherently make Bernanke qualified to keep America out of another depression, any more than Steven Ambrose is qualified to keep America out of a new global war by virtue of having studied WWII for decades. The past provides some lessons, but the economic realities of 2008 are quite a bit different than those of 1929.
The consolidation of Big Media over the last few decades put newspapers on this path. Americans bitch and moan about how the media is either too liberal or too conservative, but that misses the point. Americans may have allowed our government to loosen ownership rules, but we're mistrustful of a handful of companies controlling access to all news and opinions. When the mass-market Internet arrived, people realized they could find news and opinions that weren't being provided by the news oligarchs.
People want to hear independent voices, even though those voices are often screwed-up, looney, and unprofessional. We've all grown used to sifting the wheat from the chaff online.mThe really good newspapers that are providing high-quality reporting and are well-managed will still survive. The rest of them won't, but new forms of news will continue to germinate on the Internet.
Would you say they're of the Mussolini variety, or the Hitler variety? Or do they hew to the Franco approach? Have you and your fellow partisans decided to take to the woods to avoid forced deportation? Here's a tip: When you're out there laying low in the woods, waiting for the right time to blow up a bridge or perhaps ambush a staff car, be sure to regularly clean and oil your Sten gun. It's no use having ammo if your weapon won't fire!
Every time Apple runs those "We're so hip and cool" commercials with that smug jackass bragging about how cool he is versus the fuddy-duddy old PC, they probably loose 10 potential future customers for every one short-term customer they gain.
Apple has been running this campaign for almost two years, and the ads have inspired as many parodies as the "Got Milk" campaign. It's a cultural phenomenon. During the last two years, Apple's hardware sales have increased dramatically, so it is difficult to believe that the ad campaign has been a failure.
I'm not sure there's a distinction between "potential future customers" and "one short-term customer." You either buy the product or you don't. If you buy it and you like it, you'll buy it again. If you buy it and you don't like it, you won't buy it again. The purpose of the ad is to get you to consider purchasing in the first place. If it pushes you toward a purchase, it has done its job.
In the early days of Slashdot, Apple got no respect. Mention Macs in Slashdot and you were dismissed out of hand as being hopelessly wedded to the past or a particularly clueless, nontechnical moron. This was well before the iPod and the iPhone and the "I'm a Mac" ads. The popular perception in Linux and Windows circles was that the Macintosh was essentially dead.
The Mac started gaining cred with the tech elites when Mac OS X shipped. Over a period of several years, with each software and hardware success, Apple gained more respect with geeks and more visibility with non-geeks. Now it is commonplace to hear people talk about Mac users and their vile, insufferably smug attitudes. But before Apple gained this respect, to be a Mac user meant that you were constantly assaulted with comments belittling your intellectual capability and your choice in computers.
In my experience most Mac users who weathered the 1990s aren't very smug about Macs. They are just happy that they're no longer being constantly questioned for using a particular computer platform. Even so, there are plenty of myths about Macs that persist. After you've heard them over and over and over and over, it gets a bit redundant and annoying.
I use Windows and Linux, and as both of those OSes have changed, so has my perception of them. Back in the day, WindowsNT rocked. I was able to do many things with NT that I simply couldn't do with pre-OS X versions of the MacOS. Windows ME sucked, but generally I've been pleased with Windows 2000. By the same token, when I first started using Linux I wondered how it would ever compete with Solaris. I certainly never thought it would be a usable desktop OS. Obviously Linux has matured, and so has my evaluation of the OS.
But there are still people who should know better who proclaim that the Mac is a great machine if you're just concerned with eye candy. They also frequently state that Macs aren't good business machines, which is ironic given that the growth of Windows has been helped in large part by the games industry. I'm not going to say that serious gamers should buy Macs - that would be absurd. But when I hear that Macs are spec-for-spec always more expensive, and that Macs are "more proprietary" than Windows machines, it grates on me. The Mac has changed over the years, just as Windows and Linux have changed.
It is also somewhat amusing that nobody ever got raked over the coals for being consistently anti-Mac. If you enjoy something and feel an affinity for it, you are punished. If you hold a consistently negative opinion of something, or refuse to consider trying something new, you are protected by your majority status and are considered perfectly normal.
Since the tone of responses to the parent post seems to be, "It's about time someone hit back at those annoying Mac users," I have donned by asbestos suit.;-)
So, generalizing generations, where does that book put people born 1978-1980?
Strauss & Howe would put you at the end of what they called the 13th Generation, or what everyone else calls Generation X. The generational attributes of folks at the edges show that the Generations analysis of generational history is not exact - it's not science, but it is helpful in understanding how different groups of people move through history.
As an example, I have a relative who was born in '43. By some definitions he's a Silent Generation guy, by others he's one of the very first Boomers. But his experiences and and the historical influences in his life put him squarely in the Boomer camp. Does he identify more with the student protesters of the 1960s or with the generation overshadowed by their older siblings who fought in WWII? In his case, definitely the former, but another person born in the same year but in a different location and a different social and family setting might actually identify more with the latter.
I'm curious how being in that in-between state has affected you. As someone born in the early years but well into Gen X, I've never experienced that in-between feeling. Do you feel it has stripped you of opportunities or made you feel like an outsider?
In fact, if I were as condescending as the old people who write these books, I would say all our problems is the result of the boomer generation, those that railed and connived to get out of their duty, but has no problem sending other people children into the same fight. Fortunately, I am not so simplistic.
To which books are you referring? Strauss and Howe never characterized the Boomers as shirkers. In fact, they stay away from normative judgments.
but the thing is this: how would you know this is a repetitive issue, unless you were.. well.. an unfashionable grey-beard?
Though you speak in jest (I think), I actually first heard about this when I was young and hip, back when Strauss & Howe wrote about it. That's the great thing about books. You can learn from other folks, instead of just through experience.
Slashdot Mirror
Duarte's blog post is interesting and cites some statistics, but calling it a "study" is a bit rich.
I don't know anyone named Charge, but I know more than a few Bills. Unfortunately I don't have enough bills in my wallet. Never did care for the Buffalo Bills.
I don't know why people bother reading a bunch of made up crap...
I haven't been as startled by anything in Slashdot in quite some time. Human society has always been built around stories. I'm curious if you feel this way just about things you read, or if you apply the "real things only" directive to TV, movies, and music as well.
Sticking to the facts excludes a huge swath of cultural artifacts, from pretty much all of recent popular music to the majority of television programming to almost all of the movies shown in theaters.
It would be an interesting experiment to try to exclude all non-factual media for a month. Of course there's the legitimate question of what constitutes "real things that actually happen," but even if we leave the debate over subjective/objective reality to the philosophers, I suspect it would be difficult to pull off even for a month.
You'll be targeted by the sharpshooters either way. Upgrade the system and they'll complain that you should cater to the lynx-using crowd (all five of 'em), and so avoid the necessity of an upgrade. Don't upgrade it and they'll complain that the site doesn't load like greased lightning. Again, a pure text, no graphics site would fix all your problems, they'll say.
Then there will be the sharpshooters who will feign disinterest. Nategoose, for example, will say: "How does this affect my life?" as if he could take Slashdot or leave it.
This is all just proof that those who actually get their hands dirty and create something wildly successful will always incur the wrath of a few cranks.
Or does that Connect Center login look like a dating site?
However, looking at the history of the RIAA's lobbying efforts, it's extremely likely that we'll soon be seeing a law that criminalizes making copyrighted files available.
The RIAA has been going after consumers for many years now, and they've been almost completely unsuccessful in their efforts. They've also been pushing for years to get Congress to let the RIAA call the shots on P2P, again without success.
Big Media has been successful in getting copyright's duration extended to infinity and beyond, but they have not been able to get Congress to go nearly as far beyond that as they'd like.
Basically Congress has said it's fine for the RIAA to go after consumers, but as soon as they start making life difficult for Internet content providers, they're not going to side with the RIAA. It's obvious that the music industry is the past and the Internet industry is the present, and Congress knows this.
Apple legal isn't going to let this stand. Even IF everything is legit, they won't have the money to defend themselves against Apple.
If this one-man wonder of a company totally screws up, which is likely, it will just reinforce the notion in consumer's minds that the best purveyor of Macs is *drumroll* Apple.
gee, i wonder how much fox news and cnn omitted of the whole tibet issue and what twisted image they are painting of china to make you think like this.
I don't get my news from the idiot box. As for Chinese bloggers expressing themselves, that's great. My point was that the government only allows bloggers to express themselves when their views coincide with the government's interests.
Allowing one side of a debate to be heard isn't freedom of speech. It's manipulation of speech.
I was being ironic. ;-)
Good question. The short answer is that the Lamaist (Buddhist) theocracy is very cruel and inhumane.
You obviously cherry-picked from the Parenti page, which is lengthy. First, the focus of the page is on the *history* of Tibetan Buddhism, not on what it is now. He points out that while many in the West see "old Tibet" as some sort of wonderful place, the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy was authoritarian and cruel. The specific quote you pulled was from an encounter with a Tibetan in the 1960s.
This is also the same man who has written: "The dismemberment and mutilation of Yugoslavia was part of a concerted policy initiated by the United States and the other Western powers in 1989," as part of a larger conspiracy in which the South Slavs seem to have played no part in the war and atrocities that caused so much destruction and horror. If the US government holds an official position, you can expect Parenti's to be in direct opposition to that position, regardless of the particulars.
Parenti's job as a social critic is to criticize, to poke holes, and to hold himself in opposition to the existing social order in the United States. That's a good thing, but that doesn't make him an unbiased source of information. It makes him one voice out of many.
Interestingly enough, that's what this entire thread is about. It's about expression of opinions. Funny isn't it, that Chinese citizens get to express themselves about issues like the recent unrest in Tibet, but you don't hear much from Tibetan bloggers in China?
Gee, I wonder why that is?
Sampling Chinese blog and media views on Tibet would be like sampling US blogs and media just after the Iraq War started. It was all pretty rah-rah and gung-ho then. The Chinese are no different.
You're so right on the money. After all, the American and Chinese media and blogosphere are both equally open to diverse views. It's not like the Chinese government controls mass media or the Internet in China!
I for one am excited and happy that so many Chinese bloggers have been able to finally puncture the information controls set up by their government. Now we can finally hear the true voices of China, free from propagandistic manipulation, free from oversight by the Great Firewall of China, and free to say whatever they want about the Tibetan Troublemakers!
The Chinese government has been far too soft on the Tibetan Troublemakers. Now that the government has finally allowed the true voices of China to be heard, the government will no longer be allowed to coddle and protect those violent, dangerous Tibetan thugs!
With the voices of the people forcing the Chinese government to respond to the evil that the Tibetan thugs represent, we'll finally see just how powerful true Chinese democracy can be!
It is shameful to suggest that any of the spontaneous outpouring of disbelief and anger by ordinary Chinese citizens has anything to do with the government's control of news outlets, or with the government's Internet filtering apparatus. Shameful!
I fail to see how trivial statistics such as this where the only thing being compared is the color of a persons skin matter.
It's not trivial if you're the one being discriminated against. Discrimination takes many forms, and is often unconscious. But the effects are cumulative. Pile "trivial statistics" on each other and after a while you'll see the pattern.
Who gives a shit what whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, etc do. As long as we're not fucking each other over, who gives a shit.
People *are* getting fucked over on the basis of race, so actually it does matter.
The reason you find skepticism in any industry for the capabilities of a colored person is because of the bang-up job the so-called 'civil rights leaders' have done yelling and screaming about how minorities cannot achieve anything without assistance.
It is rather easy to forget about racism when you're white. We like to imagine that there are no racial biases in operation when we get a job or are accepted into a group, but white people, and white males in particular are constantly receiving the benefits of racial bias.
Racism exists, whether we believe it does or not. There is no particular industry to blame, but we live in a society that still makes it more difficult for African-Americans to compete, and the effects of unequal treatment in the past don't just vanish overnight.
As just one example, conduct even the most rudimentary research on housing policy in America and you'll find that the US government systematically denied African-Americans the opportunity to buy housing in "good" areas of major American cities (meaning white areas) after WW II, which led to lower property values for African-Americans. Even after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, it's been an uphill battle for African-Americans who want to move into high-value white areas.
There are a wide variety of other indicators of racial bias in hiring decisions, pay, and so on. It doesn't sit well with white people who would like to pretend that racism has been conquered, and that we all operate on a level playing field, but racism is still with us. It's there staring you in the face if you care to see it.
An anguished, collective shout of horror and surprise emanates from Virgin Media's PR department: "Nooooooooooo!!!"
Bubble and recession at the same time? Uh... this is just one company buying a domain name for $2.6M. Taken in isolation this information tells us nothing other than the fact that one company thought that particular domain name was worth $2.6M.
Besides, no bubble brings all prices sky high, and no recession ever brings all pricing to the floor. Whatever the larger economic picture, there will always be companies taking risks and companies playing it safe.
Political bullshit, makes no sense. This is a financial problem.
Make no mistake, it sucks that we have to talk about this. But it had to be done.
Since you're apparently more of an expert on this than Ben Bernanke (who spent much of his career studying the Great Depression), let's hear what you would've done.
Three things:
The consolidation of Big Media over the last few decades put newspapers on this path. Americans bitch and moan about how the media is either too liberal or too conservative, but that misses the point. Americans may have allowed our government to loosen ownership rules, but we're mistrustful of a handful of companies controlling access to all news and opinions. When the mass-market Internet arrived, people realized they could find news and opinions that weren't being provided by the news oligarchs.
People want to hear independent voices, even though those voices are often screwed-up, looney, and unprofessional. We've all grown used to sifting the wheat from the chaff online.mThe really good newspapers that are providing high-quality reporting and are well-managed will still survive. The rest of them won't, but new forms of news will continue to germinate on the Internet.
... it means.
They're just fascists!
Would you say they're of the Mussolini variety, or the Hitler variety? Or do they hew to the Franco approach? Have you and your fellow partisans decided to take to the woods to avoid forced deportation? Here's a tip: When you're out there laying low in the woods, waiting for the right time to blow up a bridge or perhaps ambush a staff car, be sure to regularly clean and oil your Sten gun. It's no use having ammo if your weapon won't fire!
Every time Apple runs those "We're so hip and cool" commercials with that smug jackass bragging about how cool he is versus the fuddy-duddy old PC, they probably loose 10 potential future customers for every one short-term customer they gain.
Apple has been running this campaign for almost two years, and the ads have inspired as many parodies as the "Got Milk" campaign. It's a cultural phenomenon. During the last two years, Apple's hardware sales have increased dramatically, so it is difficult to believe that the ad campaign has been a failure.
I'm not sure there's a distinction between "potential future customers" and "one short-term customer." You either buy the product or you don't. If you buy it and you like it, you'll buy it again. If you buy it and you don't like it, you won't buy it again. The purpose of the ad is to get you to consider purchasing in the first place. If it pushes you toward a purchase, it has done its job.
In the early days of Slashdot, Apple got no respect. Mention Macs in Slashdot and you were dismissed out of hand as being hopelessly wedded to the past or a particularly clueless, nontechnical moron. This was well before the iPod and the iPhone and the "I'm a Mac" ads. The popular perception in Linux and Windows circles was that the Macintosh was essentially dead.
The Mac started gaining cred with the tech elites when Mac OS X shipped. Over a period of several years, with each software and hardware success, Apple gained more respect with geeks and more visibility with non-geeks. Now it is commonplace to hear people talk about Mac users and their vile, insufferably smug attitudes. But before Apple gained this respect, to be a Mac user meant that you were constantly assaulted with comments belittling your intellectual capability and your choice in computers.
In my experience most Mac users who weathered the 1990s aren't very smug about Macs. They are just happy that they're no longer being constantly questioned for using a particular computer platform. Even so, there are plenty of myths about Macs that persist. After you've heard them over and over and over and over, it gets a bit redundant and annoying.
I use Windows and Linux, and as both of those OSes have changed, so has my perception of them. Back in the day, WindowsNT rocked. I was able to do many things with NT that I simply couldn't do with pre-OS X versions of the MacOS. Windows ME sucked, but generally I've been pleased with Windows 2000. By the same token, when I first started using Linux I wondered how it would ever compete with Solaris. I certainly never thought it would be a usable desktop OS. Obviously Linux has matured, and so has my evaluation of the OS.
But there are still people who should know better who proclaim that the Mac is a great machine if you're just concerned with eye candy. They also frequently state that Macs aren't good business machines, which is ironic given that the growth of Windows has been helped in large part by the games industry. I'm not going to say that serious gamers should buy Macs - that would be absurd. But when I hear that Macs are spec-for-spec always more expensive, and that Macs are "more proprietary" than Windows machines, it grates on me. The Mac has changed over the years, just as Windows and Linux have changed.
It is also somewhat amusing that nobody ever got raked over the coals for being consistently anti-Mac. If you enjoy something and feel an affinity for it, you are punished. If you hold a consistently negative opinion of something, or refuse to consider trying something new, you are protected by your majority status and are considered perfectly normal.
Since the tone of responses to the parent post seems to be, "It's about time someone hit back at those annoying Mac users," I have donned by asbestos suit. ;-)
So, generalizing generations, where does that book put people born 1978-1980?
Strauss & Howe would put you at the end of what they called the 13th Generation, or what everyone else calls Generation X. The generational attributes of folks at the edges show that the Generations analysis of generational history is not exact - it's not science, but it is helpful in understanding how different groups of people move through history.
As an example, I have a relative who was born in '43. By some definitions he's a Silent Generation guy, by others he's one of the very first Boomers. But his experiences and and the historical influences in his life put him squarely in the Boomer camp. Does he identify more with the student protesters of the 1960s or with the generation overshadowed by their older siblings who fought in WWII? In his case, definitely the former, but another person born in the same year but in a different location and a different social and family setting might actually identify more with the latter.
I'm curious how being in that in-between state has affected you. As someone born in the early years but well into Gen X, I've never experienced that in-between feeling. Do you feel it has stripped you of opportunities or made you feel like an outsider?
In fact, if I were as condescending as the old people who write these books, I would say all our problems is the result of the boomer generation, those that railed and connived to get out of their duty, but has no problem sending other people children into the same fight. Fortunately, I am not so simplistic.
To which books are you referring? Strauss and Howe never characterized the Boomers as shirkers. In fact, they stay away from normative judgments.
but the thing is this: how would you know this is a repetitive issue, unless you were .. well .. an unfashionable grey-beard?
Though you speak in jest (I think), I actually first heard about this when I was young and hip, back when Strauss & Howe wrote about it. That's the great thing about books. You can learn from other folks, instead of just through experience.