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Main Entry: 1com�pan�ion
Pronunciation: k&m-'pan-y&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English compainoun, from Old French compagnon, from Late Latin companion-, companio, from Latin com- + panis bread, food -- more at FOOD
Date: 13th century
1 : one that accompanies another : COMRADE, ASSOCIATE; also : one that keeps company with another
2 obsolete : RASCAL
3 a : one that is closely connected with something similar b : one employed to live with and serve another
thus ranteth spaga at 8:32 PM | Permalink |
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It shoots how fast?Imagine a gun that fires a million rounds a minute -- enough to shred a target in a blink of an eye, or throw up a defensive wall against an incoming missile.
This is Metal Storm, a weapons system that forsakes old-style mechanics for the speed of electronics. I wonder if the local Wal-Mart will be carrying these any time soon.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 4:52 PM | Permalink |
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You know, I was thinking the other day:
1. Men have nipples
2. Women have nipples
3. It's acceptable for men to walk around shirtless
4. It's acceptable for women to expose all of their upper body except for their nipples
5. It's acceptable for women to wear see through clothing that shows off the nipples
6. It's not acceptable for women to walk around shirtless.
What gives?
thus ranteth "Stainless" Steele McKaye at 2:03 PM | Permalink |
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Tonight was all about this single exchange of words...
James: what would college be like if alcohol didnt exist?
Colin: We'd just have to have sex all the time.
"Now there are several good reasons for drinking
and one has just entered my head.
If a man can't drink when he's living,
then how the hell can he drink
when he's dead"
thus ranteth spaga at 11:24 PM | Permalink |
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HABITS |
There are a lot of things that we - and by 'we' I mean almost all people - do just because we've always done them. Habits are powerful; if you hang on to them for too long they can become almost a sort of ritual. That's one reason why, in the conscious part of my mind, I've always held fast to the idea of embracing change. Stagnation is bad for many reasons, but I think one of the big reasons it's bad on a personal level is that everything slowly begins to become automatic. Day in, day out, everything's the same, it's all routine, all habit. Lifeless. Change is the nectar of the spirit.
I'm a habitual fighter. I'm not sure to what extent this fact influences my personality, or how my formative years would have changed if this was not a part of my character, but I've been fighting in some form or another since I was about 7 years old. When I was 7, my parents enrolled me in a martial arts class; looking back on it, I can say with considerable confidence that the class was ludicrously ineffective, but nonetheless, I achieved black belt by the time I was 10, which meant all of nothing, and the fighter's mentality had become quite firmly entrenched in my young brain. After my parents slowly realized that the martial arts studio - whose name I shall not utter here - was a worthless con job that was gleefully taking huge chunks of their hard-earned cash and teaching us garbage in return, I finally broke off that particular engagement, but, as it turned out, my good friend Doug had also acquired the fighting habit at an early age. Doug and I spent several years kicking the living shit out of one another, often with hockey sticks or other instruments of pain and imbecility, and then when Doug moved away, I soon found a kung fu school. It turns out that this kung fu school was not a particularly worthwhile use of my time, either, but I digress. My point is: I've always fought. Most recently, I joined a no-holds-barred fighting gym here in Athens, which teaches Brazilian jujitsu, Thai kickboxing, wrestling, boxing...you name it. I was never an especially good fighter, since the two prior schools I'd attended were more-or-less terrible, but this gym I've joined up with now is really teaching me a lot. It's useful stuff, I suppose.
So: fighter's habit. Still. I'm finally getting to be half-decent. I'm with a gym that, for once, is on the up-and-up; no fancy con jobs, just some down-to-earth instruction and a bunch of guys kicking the shit out of each other. And I only realized recently just how fucking sick of it all I really am.
I went down to Florida a few weeks ago to visit Doug. He's now practicing some arcane variety of kung fu - Wah Lum Praying Mantis, I believe it's called. It's really an art form; extremely beautiful to watch. Kung fu practicioners do not consider it a form of dance, of course, but the forms practiced by this particular school are as pleasing to watch as any form of real dance that I've ever seen. I think he's finally managed to rid himself of the fighter's habit, and he seems happier for it. His kung fu, he offered, was more just an exercise, a way to focus, a way to release some stress. I asked him about the practical applications of his forms, and he said that there were some, but he didn't seem especially concerned about them. The form - the intricate sequence of fluid movements - was an end unto itself, for him. I respected that a lot.
I think it was then that I realized that I was tired of fighting. I'd once had a keen appreciation of the sheer aesthetic beauty of forms: for a time, I'd practiced Chang Ch'uan, or Shaolin Long Fist Kung Fu, and the grace of a well-practiced form is a hard thing to put into words. But I was always preoccupied with the practical application of each movement - and supposedly, there is one for just about every movement, but it always seemed strongly impractical to me, and that's why I ended up dropping Chang Ch'uan in favor of the eminently practical no-holds-barred fighting style. But after talking to Doug, I think I had a bit of an epiphany. I think maybe I've regained my old appreciation for the beauty and grace of the form alone, and I think maybe I've also begun to lose the fighter's habit.
So now, after my May vacation and my June pseudo-vacation, the guys at the no-holds-barred gym are expecting me to come back. Oh, it's not a big deal, I guess; I'm hardly a star fighter there or anything, but I did say I'd go back this summer, and I really do want to make good on that. But it's just...I don't really want to, anymore. And I have to say, for the first time since I was 7 years old, I'm think I'm actually okay with that.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 5:32 PM | Permalink |
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Advice from James Lileks: Other adages for today: when life hands you lemons, head down the hall, hide in the closet of your enemy, wait until they get a papercut, then leap out shouting BANZAI and crush the lemon in your hand right over the papercut. Save the peel. Go downstairs to the bar. Order a vodka. Use the peel. Yum! Hmm...I wonder if this is applicable to my Cell Biology lemon?
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 12:21 PM | Permalink |
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Well...I feel like expressing myself right now.
I started out this summer laying low. Keeping under the radar. I just wanted to make things right with my parents. I blew thousands of their hard earned dollars this year going to concerts, partying, and living it up. After a few weeks of laying low I started my summer job at the Y. Then my parents left for two weeks. In retrospect, the parties I threw did not make up for the lonliness I felt living on my own. Even with my parents back now, I'm suffering from depression. I haven't really admitted it to anyone before, but I feel like I can talk about it on here. About a week into summer, my Mom approached me. She told me that she had suffered from depression most of her life. She told me that she takes medication to aid her problem. She told me that she believes that I suffer from depression too. At first I was in denial...but now I'm coming to grips with the truth. A part of me wants to go to the doctor to get a diagnosis. Another part of me is afraid...because I know that I am at a high risk to abuse any medication I may obtain. To me all of this makes perfect sense. I use partying and music as a front for what is on the inside. I really think that deep down, I am a compassionate person. But I feel lonly almost all of the time. Only when I am around my closest of friends and family do I feel warm. I use substances to combat my emotions and take me to another place. A place where I don't have to think...where I can just be myself. I have spent a lot of time this summer by myself. I do have a wide group of friends...and I do know who my true friends are...but that still doesn't give me the comfort that I need right now...maybe I don't have a problem, and I am trying to rationalize what is missing in my life...but then again, maybe i do...
thus ranteth spaga at 10:58 PM | Permalink |
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I just realized today that this beautiful summer of my life that I'm losing to summer school, due to the miserable pit of...misery...known as Cell Biology, did not need to be lost. No, no: for I have realized that I could have perfectly well taken it next spring! I AM LOSING MY SUMMER FOR NOTHING! AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH! And I have a Cell Bio exam that I'm going to fail. Miserably. In misery. I don't want to drop the class because I already dropped it once in the spring. And after I fail the test tomorrow, I'm probably not going to be able to withdraw at all!
This is me, slamming my head into the wall. Thud, thud, thud.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 11:15 PM | Permalink |
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Freeman Dyson has an illuminating perspective on the essential difference between naturalists and humanists:The biosphere is the most complicated of all the things we humans have to deal with. The science of planetary ecology is still young and undeveloped. It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreements about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values. The disagreement about values may be described in an oversimplified way as a disagreement between naturalists and humanists. Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is respect for the natural order of things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels, and the consequent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide, are unqualified evils.
Humanists believe that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and we are now in charge. Humans have the right to reorganize nature so that humans and biosphere can survive and prosper together. For humanists, the highest value is intelligent coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are war and poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment, disease and hunger, the miseries that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in The Threepenny Opera, "Feeding comes first, morality second." If people do not have enough to eat, we cannot expect them to put much effort into protecting the biosphere. In the long run, preservation of the biosphere will only be possible if people everywhere have a decent standard of living. The humanist ethic does not regard an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as evil, if the increase is associated with worldwide economic prosperity, and if the poorer half of humanity gets its fair share of the benefits. Read the entire article. Dyson has some excellent insights to the climate change debate. I found this article via Colin Glassey, who chimes in:Freeman doesn't point out the fact that Alaska has seen a warming trend that extends back to 1970. Nor does he mention that 65 million years ago Alaska was forested and ice-free, just like Antartica. Interesting.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 11:32 AM | Permalink |
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The first biotech drug for asthma was approved by the FDA on Friday:When the body detects something it is allergic to, IgE antibodies send signals to "mast" cells all over the body to release histamines, prostaglandins, and other chemicals to counter the attacks. Sometimes this is normal, but other times the antibodies react against substances that are completely benign. "Your immune system has set up a response against something harmless," Field said.
In these cases, it's no longer the allergen that's the problem. It's the allergic reaction itself, which can be severe enough to kill a person.
Xolair (generic name omalizumab) prevents IgE antibodies from sending messages to the mast cells so these cells never get the signal to release the chemicals which cause the reaction. The drug, the article goes on to note, is expected to be available in 20 days. Although slated to be rather expensive, patients are lining up in droves for the drug's release.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 10:19 PM | Permalink |
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Collin May eviscerates Matthew Parris's not-so-subtle insinuations that America is run by Germans, which, with a bit of frenzied hand-waving, of course means Nazis and fascists:But if this isn�t enough, Parris turns to the testimony of a German-American friend who went traveling from Berlin to Prague and found that the houses all resembled those in suburban America. Apparently this fellow has never traveled much since you can find American-style homes in many locations throughout the world, and not just on the Berlin-Prague autoroute. Still, this is only an introduction to Parris� more profound point, which is the �scary� similarity between how German statesmen used to talk and how American statesmen talk today. So there you have it, the link has been established. From architecture to statesmanship. Apparently, the statesmen we�re referring to here are those of the Third Reich, or at least the Kaiser. America is aggressive, insecure, bombastic Germany of 1914 or 1939, you take your pick. Via Tim Blair, who is more than happy to kick Parris when he's down.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 1:47 PM | Permalink |
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Remarkable: Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I was instructed to try again. After another two minutes, I tried a third cat, and then in due course a fourth. Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes were removed. I looked down at my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly unconvincing. But after I had been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial magnetic stimulation, their tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their faces were personable and convincing. They were even beginning to wear clever expressions.
I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings, though I had watched myself render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow over the course of a very few minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had gone from an incompetent draftsman to a very impressive artist of the feline form.
Snyder looked over my shoulder. ''Well, how about that? Leonardo would be envious.'' Or turning in his grave, I thought. A TMS machine functions by switching a large electrical current in a very rapid, controlled fashion through a coil held outside the patient's head:One very promising avenue for influencing the living brain has emerged in the last decade, based on the use of pulsed magnetic fields. The skull is a good insulator, and past efforts to alter the electrical activity happening inside it have required high voltages, with little opportunity for fine control or focus of the effects. Consider instead how easily a magnet under a wooden tabletop can move a pin on the surface - magnetic fields pass almost unaffected through insulators, including the skull.
It is easy in principle to get a magnetic field to produce electrical effects: simply change the field over time, and any charge-carriers (like the ions in the cells of the brain) will be influenced to flow, creating an induced current. However, affecting neurons inside the head requires a lot of magnetic force to be changed very quickly, and the technology to do this has only been around for about a decade. The first trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) machines, capable of delivering a pulse every three seconds, were developed as diagnostic aids for neurologists. For instance, the motor part of the brain can be stimulated, inducing a twitch of the thumb, which tells a neurologist that the intervening nerve pathways are intact. Machines are now available which can give up to 50 stimuli per second (rapid-rate TMS, or rTMS) and their effects are more interesting. Among a wide range of possibilities, it is believed that rTMS may have a place in the treatment of some mental illnesses. It is a non-invasive technique, apparently free of serious side-effects, capable of modifying the activity of specific brain areas.
The magnetic fields used in TMS are produced by passing current through a hand-held coil, whose shape determines the properties and size of the field. The coil is driven by a machine which switches the large current necessary in a very precise and controlled way, at rates up to 50 cycles per second in rTMS. The coil is held on the scalp - no actual contact is necessary - and the magnetic field passes through the skull and into the brain. Small induced currents can then make brain areas below the coil more or less active, depending on the settings used.
In practice, TMS and rTMS are able to influence many brain functions, including movement, visual perception, memory, reaction time, speech and mood. The effects produced are genuine but temporary, lasting only a short time after actual stimulation has stopped.
Generally, TMS appears to be free from harmful effects. Research using animals and human volunteers has showed little effect on the body in general as a result of stimulation, and examination of brain tissue submitted to thousands of TMS pulses has shown no detectable structural changes. It is possible in unusual circumstances to trigger a seizure in normal patients, but a set of guidelines which virtually eliminate this risk are available. Research continues, but TMS is certainly free of obvious side-effects like those of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), which still makes quite an impact on patients despite refinements in technique. (Hat tip: Slashdot.)
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 12:58 PM | Permalink |
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OLED watch: engineers at Sony have developed a prototype flexible computer. Although the prototype uses a standard LCD display, a production model utilizing an OLED display may only be a few years away:Sony envisages paper-thin gadgets no bigger than a credit card, made from several layers of components: a flexible organic light-emitting display (OLED), flexible electronic circuitry, a touch-sensitive panel on the back of the device, and an embedded piezoelectric sensor.
The resulting device would have no conventional mechanical parts. You would steer the cursor using a touch panel on the reverse of the mini PC, while pushing the middle of the device in or out would let you browse through a menu. Bending could also control tasks such as zooming in and out of a map, controlling the playback speed of video files and editing the composition of image layers. Prototypes of these in-your-wallet devices are about three years away, says Schwesig. Read the whole article. The bit on tactile feedback built into PDA's is particularly intriguing.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 1:51 PM | Permalink |
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Sun Microsystems is hovering like a starving vulture over the embattled IBM's AIX customers, as the "litigation-happy" wolves at SCO move in for the kill:Meanwhile, IBM rival Sun Microsystems Inc. wasted no time this week in unveiling an advertising campaign aimed at prodding corporate AIX users to start worrying about the ongoing legal fight (see story). In the ads, Sun offers its own Solaris as an alternative Unix platform.
"Attention AIX Users: Sun is Here to Help. ... Unfortunately, our friends in Blue have a problem with licensing contracts that could make things very expensive for anyone running AIX," said the ads, which offer free two-day assessments to customers looking to migrate from AIX to Solaris.
Nancy Weintraub, director of competitive intelligence at Sun, said the motivation for the ad campaign is "to help customers who are concerned. It really depends on who you're talking to in an organization," she said, adding that legal officials inside companies are often more worried about the implications of the SCO action than are IT officials.
In a separate statement, Sun reaffirmed to "its customers and partners that it has licensing rights to Unix code" and doesn't face the kinds of legal issues being pursued by SCO against IBM. Sun has been happily kissing SCO's ass for some time now. But the wolves are looking smaller and scrawnier as they get closer: according to an unnamed source inside SCO, SCO may have actually pulled code from the Linux kernel, not the other way around. SCO has even resorted to cheap slams against Linux uber-developer Linus Torvalds, whose response is characteristically frank: "I do not look up any patents on principle because (a) it's a horrible waste of time and (b) I don't want to know."
"The fact is technical people are better off not looking at patents. If you don't know what they cover and where they are, you won't be knowingly infringing on them," Mr. Torvalds wrote in the e-mail message last August.
In an e-mail interview earlier this month, Mr. Torvalds explained that his was a candid view in the murky, complex realm of software patents these days.
"Hey, one of the advantages of not personally being involved in any of the commercial Linux players is that I can be honest," Mr. Torvalds wrote. "In fact, openness pretty much requires it � there is no corporate speak here. Ask any lawyer in a tech company (off the record, so that he can be honest too), and he'll tell you that engineers should absolutely not try to look up other people's patents. It's not their job, and you don't want them tainted." And Sun, meanwhile, is not looking terribly healthy, either.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 1:27 PM | Permalink |
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THC: About the HP - you can upgrade it, but it's hard to tell how far. Check if it has an AGP slot (uppermost slot if it's there, will be brown in color). If it has one, great. You can get almost any new card out there and i'll work. If it doesn't...well, you should throw the computer through a window. (You'll have almost no choices at all - only PCI cards - and they generally are expensive and not very good.) That'd be your hint to buy another computer.
thus ranteth Gheed at 8:46 PM | Permalink |
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THC: don't listen to George, he's dim.
Neither the Geforce3 or 4 are good choices anymore. They're both somewhat outdated (yeah, a whole year) and don't have all of the most recent features. The Radeon 9500 Pro (not the regular), Radeon 9600, Radeon 9600 Pro, and Radeon 9700 are all good cards for the dollar and offer basically every feature. Oh yeah, they're fast, too.
The Radeons mentioned include the DirectX 9.0 featureset (special effects, mainly). The GeForces mentioned by my dim brother only include the DirectX 8.1 set.
thus ranteth Gheed at 8:40 PM | Permalink |
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THC: if you just wanted to run UT2K3, I think you'd be set with a Geforce 3 video card, but you're probably going to want to just go ahead and splurge for a Geforce 4 (although not the MX, because I think that one's actually inferior to the 3 for some reason). You also might want to hit up Newegg.com for a 512 meg stick of RAM. I think Crucial is a good brand.
James? Where are you? =)
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 8:37 PM | Permalink |
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James Lileks takes on Orrin Hatch:As for Orrin Hatch and his remarks about blowing up the computers of people who download pirated files: I�ll just say that I think he�s made mostly of molded plastic, there�s a pullstring in his back, and the RIAA fingerprints are all over the big white ring. I won�t listen to any of these guys blather about computers or the Internet until they have demonstrated on film that they can install some RAM, burn a CD (�shiny side down, you say?�), tell me what HTTP and URL stand for, prove they know how to get the source code for a webpage, and know better than to click �Yes� when asked if the computer should always trust data from Gator Corporation.
His remarks about remotely destroying computers that download copyrighted material is just grampa blather. The computers are stealing music! The cars are frightening the horses! The Kaiser took my dog! It would be amusing if these people didn�t have the power to pass thick stupid laws crafted by aides, lobbyists and other gnomes hauling up heavy buckets from the deep sooty mines of legalese. Of course the people who vote them up or down don�t actually read them; they get the gist from the title. My money's on Lileks.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 8:33 PM | Permalink |
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Yesterday I picked up Jet Moto up for 5 bucks at Gamestop. I think it was a good deal...I also blew 30 bucks on Unreal Tournament 2003. Too bad it does not run on my computer. Now I am forced to purchase a graphics card and more ram. If anyone knows what kind of hardware I need (Colin and George), let me know...Also, is it possible for me to upgrade my HP? Anyway, This weekend is going to blow because I have to work on Saturday and Sunday. Next weekend I am planning on visiting Athens for two alcohol induced days. Get ready guys!
thus ranteth spaga at 5:00 PM | Permalink |
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As a regular Slashdot reader, I've been more-or-less forced to follow the SCO/IBM lawsuit (which, as you can imagine, has not gone over very well with most of the Slashdotters). I have to say that SCO has seemed more and more hysterical as the lawsuit has progressed, claiming first $1B U.S. in damages, then suddenly tripling that to $3B out of the blue, as well as demanding not only that IBM cease-and-desist use and sale of AIX, but that all of IBM's customers must also cease-and-desist. Some of the details of the supposed 'stolen source code' from Unix System V in the Linux kernel are finally emerging:The lawsuit claims that IBM broke its contract with SCO by allowing parts of SCO's Unix V source code, licensed to IBM for use in AIX, to be used in the rival Linux operating system kernel.
In the past few weeks, SCO has been showing evidence of its case against IBM to selected analysts. Some examples of what it considers to be appropriated code are now emerging.
Source code delivering non-uniform memory architecture (Numa) and symmetric multiprocessing capabilities in Linux are very close to those in SCO's System V source code. But as the article (and a number of purple-with-rage Slashdotters) goes on to say, NUMA was actually developed by Sequent, not SCO, and Sequent is owned by IBM. So in essence, what SCO is claiming is that they, not the creators of the Unix V code in question, have complete control over that code, in spite of their explicit admission that Sequent does in fact own that code.
Huh?
I think I'm beginning to see the reason that Big Blue is not terribly worried by these guys.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 4:54 PM | Permalink |
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Johann Hari on Iran's slowly unfolding Tiananmen Square:Flash: student leaders are jailed indefinitely last November for protesting against the execution of a liberal university lecturer, Hashem Aghajari, who dared to speak against the mullahs.
Snap: for a whole week now, reformists in Tehran have been protesting for their "right to supervise fully the action of their rulers". Their dorms were raided again this week by thugs widely suspected of having Government links, and several students were badly beaten.
Student associations have said they will continue to demonstrate until July 9, the date of the original dorm raid. Do not be surprised if these protests are ended, China-style, by a massacre. Perhaps an open massacre - as opposed to the killings in dribs and drabs - will finally alert the world to what is happening . . . There is a reason the students in Tiananmen Square built a replica of the Statue of Liberty. There is a reason the Iranian students are so pro-American. They see that US support - and perhaps intervention - might be the only way of breaking the stultifying deadlock they find themselves in.
The US, they know, is not always bad; its people want to do good in the world and its power provides it with the opportunity to do great things. Yet because the Iranian students do not fit into the increasingly popular public view of US-bad, opponents-of-US-good, they are being ignored.
When they do achieve freedom of speech and travel, they will ask what we did to help them. Worryingly, as things stand right now only Amnesty International and George W. Bush - of all people - will be able to say that they backed the cause. And Michael Ledeen argues for a brewing Iranian revolution:The regime is in a real jam. The mullahs know the people hate them � even the timorous correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor in Tehran says that 90 percent of Iranians want democratic change, and 70 percent want drastic change � and they also know that their own instruments of repression are insufficient to deal with a massive insurrection. Many leaders of the armed forces have openly said they will side with the people if there is open civil conflict. Members of some of the most powerful institutions in the country have said that they believe more than half of the Revolutionary Guards will support the people in a frontal showdown. Ergo, the mullahs have had to import foreign thugs � described as "Afghan Arabs" in the popular press � to put down demonstrations. (Hat tips: NZPundit and The Daily Dish.)
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 1:26 PM | Permalink |
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Counterproductive blather watch: Senator Orrin Hatch has come out in favor of destroying people's computers for file-sharing:"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."
The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said. This has to be one of the most blockheaded remarks I've heard to date in the mostly frothing-at-the-mouth rhetorical battles over file-sharing. It's even pissing off people who are otherwise pro-copyright, like Neil Gaiman:I really like copyright. I think copyright is a good thing. Copyright is what feeds me, for a start. Still, if there was ever a pro-copyright approach that made me instinctively want to put on a Support Piracy tee shirt, it's this article from the Washngton Post: Hatch Takes Aim at Illegal Downloading. It begins...
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.
Twit. Stephen Green sums up why this is so disturbing:Orrin Hatch isn't a stupid politician, in the sense that he rarely (never, to my recollection) speaks extemporaneously. He's no Clinton, thinking aloud in front of the nation then relying on his spinmeisters to clean up the mess. Hatch is as carefully measured as a souffl�.
And now he wants to explore giving the government -- or is it the record companies? -- the power to destroy or damage your computer.
Be wary of any politician who would give to the government (or favored businesses) powers he would deny to you and me . . . Hatch has given this issue quite some thought. So here we have the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee eager to have (or give away) the power to destroy personal property without due process. Unless, that is, you consider a couple of emails or IM popups to be due process. Even the National Review Online thinks it's a bad idea, for pity's sake.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 11:55 AM | Permalink |
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colin is the man...fuck the greeks.. :)
seriously....as a foreigner, which means totally unaware of that kind of system before i do believe it should not exist...first i don't see the need for your own life, secondly, i don't accept the fact that you have to buy your friends, thirdly i don't accept the fact that they consider themselves as superior or elites cause their in a frat or sorority (and i also don't understand why it can be a good criteria for an employer when you come from a frat and especially when you see what they do in parties)
finally they remind me of sects with all they stupid traditions....callin themselves sisters, brothers....or the way they dress, etc.....not to mention a lot of weird sexual morals...(talkin about the little sisters) it's totally segregated : ethnies are usually separated, black, asians frats etc... why??? why the color of your skin gives you sthg in common? you can be both black and be totally different. ; i forgot money segregation...i don't know if there's a lot of greek poors but i don't think so.
i'm not attackin the people in it but i think the system totally sucks. i think americans keep the frats cause it's a tradition but everyone knows that a lot of traditions should be abandoned.
thus ranteth amelie at 3:31 AM | Permalink |
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wow, colin! that's some pretty strong stuff!! while what you say might be true for some of the greek folks, (or even a lot of them), i think most of them are pretty much regular folks like everyone else. a few sorority girls are good friends of mine, and they are totally not at all like that! as always generalisation is the problem which leads to stereotyping. definitely a drink too many.....
thus ranteth Gautham at 12:59 AM | Permalink |
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Actually, James, I had that conversation with Samantha a few nights ago. It's what inspired my post. And I kinda think that Brian would wholeheartedly agree with me, don't you? Of course I'd excercise a little more tactfulness when discussing it with someone who might be hurt by it, but you know I speak my mind.
thus ranteth "Stainless" Steele McKaye at 11:09 PM | Permalink |
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So Colin...would you repeat those comments to one of your "Greek Friends." How about giving that argument to Samantha? How would Brian react to that? I'm just curious what you have to say to that...
thus ranteth spaga at 9:57 PM | Permalink |
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OK, first of all, I didn't say "George does too." I never include other people in my psychoses. Secondly, they never stopped talking to me. I'm still pretty good friends with both of those girls. But do I hate sororities and fraternities? Yes. With all my heart and soul. "Why," you ask? Well, since this is a bastion of free speech...
First of all, they are ridiculously conformist. I'd waste a few sentences here describing exactly what they look like, but you all know: North Face, Abercrombie, Khaki, and Rainbow sandals. I could go on all night, but that's really not necessary. Suffice it to say that I can spot a greek as soon as they walk into the classroom. Mind you this isn't an ethnic difference. I could just as well say that "I can spot a black person as soon as they walk in," but being greek is a choice that they have made in their lifestyle, while being black (or of any other ethnicity) is not and as such, it's sad that I am so easily able to pick them out. I would hate to know that someone could tell what I like and dislike, what I believe, and what I think, simply by seeing me walk into a room. But I can with almost every greek I've met, and that's kinda sad.
Second of all, they're whores. OK, so maybe I'm imposing my own personal beliefs on sex here, but it seems to me (and keep in mind, I know a lot of greeks) that they have ridiculously lax morals when it comes to sex. Their "socials" are really nothing but mixers where no one can expect to go home alone. Let's just say I'm in a fraternity and I run into a few girls in a bar downtown. I go up and talk to them, and in the small talk, I find out what sorority they're in, and tell them my fraternity. Now, normally a girl's friends would look out for her; tell her that she's a little too drunk too be talking to guys (this is assuming that they entertain my conversation at all), but if I'm a member of the right frat, they'd be more apt to tell their drunk little buddy something more like "Oh, he's an Alpha-Delta-Delta. They're nice guys. I hope you guys have fun tonight!" If there's one thing that has ever tempted me to join a fraternity, it's not the fact that I'd have a bunch of "brothers" that I could count on and hang out with (I can make my own friends), it's the fact that I'd be guaranteed to get laid very often.
Thirdly, they are boring. This kinda goes along with my first argument, but I'll try to make it stand on it's own. It's gotta be something like 90% of them are in buisness school. That's 90% of that group of people who are willing to spend the rest of their lives behind a desk, pushing papers. Maybe I'm just a little to romantic and idealistic, but I'd like to think that people persue their dreams and beliefs, and if that's true those buisness majors must be either a little too willing to settle, or they're incredibly boring people. I have actually tried to have conversations with some of them, and it always ends in disaster. They just don't have much to say.
Last, they are exclusive. This is a little more personal than my other points, but I feel that it's just as true. I am an extremely outgoing person. I'm not afraid to talk to people I don't know, get to know them, make new friends, and all that. With sorority girls though, it's a little difficult. One of their first questions always seems to be either "Are you in a fraternity?" or "What fraternity are you in?" After I respond in the negative, their interest dies off instantly. That's a little sad, because I'd like to think that I'm a fairly interesting person, with a lot to offer in a conversation and a friendship. However, they really don't care. All the sorority girls seem to care about as far as I can tell is getting a ride on the dick of some frat boy, regardless of how he looks or what kind of person he is.
OK, so maybe my rant was a little incoherent or unconvincing. I am REALLY trashed right now, so please forgive me. I'll try to revise or amend this tomorrow if necessary.
Peace out. --C
thus ranteth "Stainless" Steele McKaye at 2:02 AM | Permalink |
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Steven Den Beste on the erosion of free speech in the EU:So is anyone who's been watching closely surprised to learn that influential voices in Europe are proposing significant limitations on expression on the internet? In the name of "fairness", of course, but the limits they propose are pernicious and deeply damaging.
Perry de Havilland is outraged at a proposal floated by the Council of Europe, which would mandate that all producers of content on the web be required to offer a "right of reply" to "those who have been criticized" . . . With respect to the First Amendment "freedom of the press", the court record is totally clear: everyone is free to own a printing press. And whoever owns a printing press has total control over what it prints, with certain very narrowly prescribed exceptions (e.g. child porn), and all of those few limits are proscriptions. They say what you cannot print; no law ever forces the owner of a press to include material.
If someone prints something you don't like, your solution is to acquire your own printing press, or to temporarily hire one, and to print and distribute an argument in opposition. But you don't have a right to demand that he print your rebuttal.
Mandating a right of reply is an infringement of free press . . . The decision to include or not include references to opposing points of view is itself an aspect of free expression.
I happen to link to posts by others who criticize me when I become aware of them. But I do not do so invariably; I link to them if I think they're worthwhile, but that choice is mine and mine alone. No one has a right to be linked by me, nor have they any right to demand that their information be placed directly on my web server. They have just the same right to the internet that I do: to create their own web site and put material on it.
In the US, at least. But those favoring a strong centralized Federal government for Europe are showing their true totalitarian colors now.
The people of Europe have one last chance, immediately, to preserve such liberty as they still have through peaceful means. They're being asked now to give up their liberty, voluntarily, and they can decide to keep their liberty. But if they don't take that chance, it may require bloody revolution later to get that liberty back. If the European Constitution is ratified, European liberty won't vanish overnight. There may be the illusion of liberty in the early days, but those who will seize power in Europe will steadily erode the rights of citizens, in the name of "fairness" and "security" and "counterbalancing a foreign power". Read the whole thing.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 12:13 AM | Permalink |
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I hate it when people call in sick to work. You know that they aren't really sick! It's just that they just are too lazy to go into work. Then people like me get stuck with extra shifts...Now I know some people like extra shifts...but for me, the less time I spend at the job means the more time I can spend rocking...right Colin? I mean, it's summertime! I should be on the beach, checking out fly women...or vacationing...of course, I'm kinda scared to leave the country right now...that SARS virus is pretty bad...haha...Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that I need to start selling crack in the ghetto...that way, I have my own schedule and can work at my own pace...wake up at 1, shower, get some food, hit the corner up at 4, deal until 9, grab some food, sell some more crack at 10, then hit the party up at 1...
thus ranteth spaga at 5:15 PM | Permalink |
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Well, here I am. It's almost midnight and I have to work tommorrow...but something seems to be lingering in my mind. Is it the fact that Sweetwater beers are not sold in Augusta? Or is it the fact that I want to be in love? Or is it the fact that I miss Athens? Or is it the fact that Colin can't score with sorority chicks (which is the reasoning behind his bitterness)? Or is it the fact that I miss my friends that I never see? I think it's a combination of all of the above. I'll leave you all with a poem I wrote last week:
I wish I knew your intentions.
I wish I knew how you feel.
I wish that my love for you
could turn into something real.
Please don�t play games with me.
You have me in the palm of your hand.
This is my question,
And your answer is all I demand.
peace...
thus ranteth spaga at 11:58 PM | Permalink |
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SORORITY BLENDER |
Between Colin and myself, I would be hard-pressed to say who is the more tactless. We have other, more flattering names for this blatant lack of tact: honesty, perhaps. Bluntness. Frankness. Not that these aren't also true, mind you, but deep down, I think the two of us are just deeply tactless guys.
I remember once, last summer actually, Colin and I were eating at the Bolton meal hall here on campus after class, talking to a girl from our philosophy class and her friend. Both were quite excited about joining a sorority in the fall. So, we're having a nice, pleasant little conversation, and one of them mentions that they want to join such-and-such sorority. Colin replies, "Yeah, I hate sorority girls. So does George."
Thanks, buddy.
The girls got pissed, of course, and I don't think really talked to us any more, but the funny thing was, I actually don't hate sorority girls (and I don't think he really does, either), but there's a grain of truth in his comment. Just a grain. I don't hate sorority girls at all, but I don't like some of the things that they stand for. The same goes for fraternity guys: I have a number of friends in frats, and they're nice enough guys. I don't hate them at all, but I damn well don't like what it all stands for.
Conformity.
Attempting to live up to Colin's shining example, last night, upon meeting a sorority girl that some of my friends were hanging out with, I rambled onto the topic of why George doesn't like sororities. I think she was kind of pissed, and a little embarrassed at my rude imbecility. She challenged me on it, though; took up the gauntlet and demanded to know just what it was I had against sorority girls. Being a little embarrassed myself, I waved it off, said, "It's just this thing I have...you know, just a thing..." She didn't let me off that easy, of course. She grilled me. What the hell was my problem, anyway?
Well, I guess what it comes down to, and what my roundabout response eventually was, was that conformity bothers me. Sameness. Now, a lot of people rag on the Greeks because they party all the time and don't seem to take college too seriously, but I don't think that's really fair. I read somewhere that Greeks actually have a higher GPA that non-Greeks, on average. After all, most of the time, the only obviously Greek people that non-Greeks see are the ones that wander downtown at night and drink until 2 in the morning. The ones that study, we don't see. They blend. (Cue Marisa Tomei voice.)
Now, the way I see it, that's the most visible indication of this underlying mentality. They blend. They really do: the Greeks, the members of the sororities and fraternities, are all quite normal looking. Average. Not that they're unattractive people; in fact, the opposite is often true. But they dress in the most normal clothes; handsome enough clothes, but they don't stand out from the crowd at all. They dress very similarly, and because of this, they tend to look quite alike.
Not that there's anything wrong with this, in and of itself, of course. Today's clothes can be pretty uniform, and a lot of people inadvertently dress the same. No, it's not this that's the problem, but it is the indication of a problem. So they all dress the same. So they all seem to have similar haircuts, and the girls all seem to wear similar makeup. Superficial similarities. What of it?
You look deeper, and it begins to become more troubling (and this really applies more to sororities than fraternities, but not that much more). It's not just that they all look vaguely similar; they all seem to act similar. In my mind, I look across their young, attractive faces, made-up prettily, hair more often than not highlighted a lovely blonde, and they fade into a nondescript blur, a vague estimation of an ordinary person. I've met a fair number of sorority girls in my three years at UGA, and thinking back on it, I'm actually unable to really define any of their personalities. It's not that they're not nice people; they are. As far as I can recall, they were mostly sweet girls. But, they seemed to lack the odd little eccentricities and quirks that make people endearing and annoying and distinct - like Robin Williams said, we call 'em flaws, but they're not. I think those little things are a large part of what defines a person. And probably more significantly in truth are the big things, the things that steer a person's life. Not just big personality traits; nothing can take those away from you. Rather, it's the sometimes nebulous hopes and dreams for the future, the ridiculous arrogance and humanity that drives people to want to really make a difference, to change the world. These young men and women seem oddly devoid of this. I can state with confidence that I've never met a member of a sorority or fraternity that really wanted to change the world. And thinking about all of this, it's almost like these people have been stripped of their individuality. More and more troubling...
Maybe I'm taking it too far. I'm sure most people would tell me that maybe I just haven't met enough Greeks, or the right ones. And I'm sure there are exceptions to what I'm saying, although I'll wager they're rare enough to send a chill down my spine. But I remember some people - not really friends, I guess, but acquaintances that I knew fairly well - from my high school that elected to join a frat or a sorority when they got to college. I knew them before, and I've met them again afterward, two or three years after. And they've changed. Not in the normal way that a person changes as they grow up and slowly become more educated and worldly; their personalities faded. Blended. Growing up with these people, they had vibrant, distinct personalities that I can vividly recall, even now. Little things, big things. And now...it's like they don't. Everyone I've met that has pursued that route has basically the same pleasant, nondescript personality. I swear it's like their old self has just...slipped away. And what really bothers me is this: the people joining sororities and fraternities see this. They see it. They have to; it's so obvious, so blatant. They see this sameness staring them in the face, and they make a conscious decision to be a part of it. And then, it sucks them in. So maybe it's just a self-fulfilling prophecy, a vicious circle: fraternities and sororities embrace bland sameness because the people that join them are actively seeking just that. That, I think, may actually be the most troubling thing of all.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 11:30 PM | Permalink |
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Slashdot: carbon nanotube fibers created! Space elevator, anyone? News24.com:Weight for weight and diameter for diameter, it is five times stronger than steel.
It matches spider silk for tensile strength - the strength needed to distort a substance before it is irretrievably deformed - and absorbs more than three times as much energy as spider dragline silk before it breaks. It easily surpasses commercial rivals such as Kevlar and graphic fibre on every test. The potential applications for this technology are pretty amazing. The current fiber is not quite strong enough for use in a space elevator, but I think at this point, it's really just a matter of time.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 12:45 PM | Permalink |
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David Whitehouse at the Beeb reports that a $6M contract has been awarded to Lockmart for a design study of JIMO (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter) under the umbrella of Project Prometheus, NASA's new program to develop nuclear-powered spacecraft. I think this is a great idea, both for the science involved (this could result in placement of an orbiter around Europa, giving us a better indication of whether or not life could exist there), and for the development of nuclear propulsion's potential to eventually assist in human journeys to other planets: using conventional propulsion, it would take over six months to travel to Mars; nuclear propulsion could cut this travel time to two months.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 12:28 PM | Permalink |
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In a desperate attempt to squeeze a last bit of excitement out of my rapidly vanishing month off from the drudgeries of college, I'm taking a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Florida to visit my old friend Doug. (Yes, that's "Circumcision Scissors" Doug.) So, my blogging will be light or non-existent until Wednesday or Thursday next week.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 12:44 PM | Permalink |
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This is an older James Lileks piece, but I was browsing his archives and particularly liked it: But the Castro-worship just fascinates me. Why? Some applaud the way he thumbs his nose at the US, which always strikes a certain crowd as the hallmark of integrity; if you wrap your derision in the big red flag you�ll always have a claque of bootlickers eager to excuse whatever you do. (The enemy of my enemy is my President for Life.) The usual gang of collectivists admire the way he organizes society from the top down to the city block, because they love power; they love force; they have a romantic attachment to anyone who uses the cudgel to hasten the arrival of heaven on earth. My favorite defense, though, is �free health care� and �literacy.�
Take the second one first. There�s no excuse for not being literate in America. Oh, we could impose literacy on the illiterate here, but it wouldn�t be pretty. We could make English proficiency a requirement for jobs, institute nationwide standards for graduation that mandated a high degree of literacy - and made the students' fulfillment of those standards a criterion for advancement in the educational establishment.
Let us pause to cogitate how well that would go over.
Health care: supposedly, it�s universal; supposedly, it�s high quality. Egalitarian. (muffled laugh.) Ask yourself this. You�re poor. You have a heart attack. Do you want to be in Havana or New York? Which phone system summons the EMTs faster? Which emergency response team is better equipped? Which hospital is better staffed with highly-paid doctors who have come from all over the world to work here?
Somehow I suspect that a heart attack in Havana at 3 AM means bundling Uncle Raul into your block captain�s �57 Belair and hoping it doesn�t break down before you get to the hospital.
But let�s assume that health care in Cuba is the equal of health care in America. If this is the reason to admire Cuba, then this is what some American citizens believe is more important than anything else. Free health care. They will give up elections, the free press, the freedom to travel, the freedom to dissent, the freedom to own a personal computer, for heaven�s sake - they�ve been banned for personal use. But for some, all of those freedoms are negotiable. They�ll give it all up for free health care. That�s their price.
Interesting.
Hardly surprising, though. For some, �freedom� - and they�ll always put it in scare quotes - is a lethal impediment if it doesn�t result in the necessary outcome. An unfree people given what�s good for them is sometimes better than a free people choosing what they want. Let the people choose, but only once, via revolution. Then let the pros handle the details for the rest of your life. Read the whole thing.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 10:53 AM | Permalink |
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Glenn Reynolds writes a short piece on just how amazing the information-gathering capabilities of the internet really are:Just try this thought experiment: Imagine that it's 1993. The Web is just appearing. And imagine that you - an unusually prescient type - were to explain to people what they could expect in the summer of 2003. Universal access to practically all information. From all over the place - even in bars. And all for free!
I can imagine the questions the skeptics would have asked: How will this be implemented? How will all of this information be digitized and made available? (Lots of examples along the line of "a thousand librarians with scanners would take fifty years to put even a part of the Library of Congress online, and who would pay for that?") Lots of questions about how people would agree on standards for wireless data transmission - "it usually takes ten years just to develop a standard, much less put it into the marketplace!" - and so on, and so on. "Who will make this stuff available for free? People want to be paid to do things!" "Why, even if we start planning now, there's no way we'll have this in ten years!" I suspect this is why people that are skeptical about the potential of the net have mostly vanished. (Make the wildest prediction imaginable about what the internet might be capable of in ten years, and I'll bet virtually no one would disagree with you.)
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 10:39 AM | Permalink |
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Just wanted to say I joined in today. I will hopefully talk about exotic cars.. Let me know if anyone is intrested.
thus ranteth Azeez at 3:10 PM | Permalink |
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WHY THE MOON? |
What, indeed, is there to do on the Moon? As it turns out, quite a lot. There are a number of native lunar resources that could be exploited for a profit. The lunar regolith is rich in refractory compounds and poor in volatiles. There is a substantial amount of calcium and silicon in the regolith, as well as aluminum, titanium, iron, and oxygen, in the form of stable metal oxides. Nitrogen is absent from the surface, which will make lunar agriculture challenging. Potassium and phosphates of the rare earth elements can be found in the KREEP ore. The major minerals are ilmenite, in the mare basins, and anorthite, in the highlands. Roughly six trillion kilograms of water ice are expected to be present in the crater floors at the lunar poles.
The presence of silicon and aluminum is significant for photovoltaics, since this will enable arrays to be constructed on the Moon, granting self-sufficiency in matters of energy. Although it would probably not make economic sense to export solar energy to Earth, it could be exported to other space settlements if done on a large enough scale. The Moon's lack of atmosphere and low gravity (1/6 G) enable launches to the Earth orbits to be made much more easily than from Earth's surface; it would be ultimately profitable for the launch companies to build manufacturing facilities on the Moon because of this. (Also, since photovoltaic arrays can be constructed on the Moon, combined with the low launch costs enables the launching of enormous solar arrays to the fourth and fifth libration points at a much lower cost than from Earth.) This low launch cost combined with the resources to build solar arrays make it possible to launch large arrays to the perpetual sunlit orbits of L4 and L5, where they are equally capable of providing power to the lunar settlement as well as to Earth. Oxygen stripped from the highly oxidized regolith can be repackaged and sold to ISS/Alpha, and any other orbital facilities that may be fabricated in the near future. Tourism will represent a significant market; the tourists already visiting ISS/Alpha could be offered an "additional" trip to the Moon on the lunar shuttle(s), for $10 M U.S., at largely marginal cost; the shuttles will be transporting crew and supplies anyway.
One item that would be of particular importance to science is a far-side lunar observatory; astronomers have said again and again that such a thing would be far better than the Hubble, and, if you had a settlement on the Moon anyway, it would be a simple matter not only to construct a telescope larger than the Hubble, but to make a large number of them. (Ask any astronomer about the waiting list for the Hubble and you'll begin to see what a boon this could be for research.) Somewhat more speculatively, the presence of significant quantities of the rare light isotope He-3, which will be enormously valuable in the (hopefully near) future as a fuel for fusion reactors.
The bottom line, I think, is that it could be done economically, particularly if there were already some settlements in orbit and near-Earth space. The existence of these things would make the market for lunar exported minerals, oxygen, and water quite profitable.
As for destroying and polluting another planet...well, the thing is that there is no biosphere to wreck on the Moon, as there is on Earth. The lunar surface is a radiation-blasted wasteland, a hard vacuum, utterly incapable of supporting life on its own. There's nothing to destroy. The underlying assumption in this argument is completely flawed.
And when you say, we should first focus on our own planet, what does that mean? We should remain Earth-bound until we are 'ready' to expand into the universe? What standard are we being held to? Is there any reason to believe that anyone would be better off for us waiting? Who gets to decide when we are ready?
As for why we should go...I've pulled this from an older post, because I think I said it better then than I could come up with now:
Space settlement is important because it will ensure humanity's continued survival: a spacefaring society is immune to many of the things that could wipe out a single-planet species, such as asteroid strikes, nuclear war, the nanotechnological 'gray goo,' a bioweapons nightmare, or some other unforeseen horror of the future. In the long run (the very long run), the Sun will go nova. If humanity is not spacefaring by that point, then the game ends. But in the short run, another extremely important aspect of space settlement is that it will have a rejuvenating effect on humanity. On Earth, the frontiers have run out. There is no longer any fabled 'New World' to flee to when the oppression of the old becomes too terrible. There is no place on this planet for new social experiments to be run. Liberal democracy would never have become a worldwide phenomenon if it had not first been tested successfully by the Americans, and that would never have come about without the existence of the so-called New World. Without anything like that left on Earth today, if we do not expand into space, no great experiments like early America could ever take place. (An interesting case can be made that the virtual worlds, such as EverQuest's Norrath and Sims Online, can serve this function, but the utility of these is entirely unproven, particularly since 'virtual' personalities are often quite different from their player, and no one lives solely in a virtual world.) More to the point, the existence of a frontier that is, for all practical purposes, infinite, would ensure that freedom remains a part of human society. The disturbing police-state tendencies of the Drug Warriors in this country notwithstanding, the U.S. is still a pretty free place to live today. We're getting significantly better in some areas, worse in others. On the whole, we're probably improving. The same could be said of many of the Pacific countries: Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea. Europe to a lesser extent, although the backsliding there seems to be substantially worse than in the U.S. or the Pacific countries. The world as a whole is enormously freer than it was fifty or sixty-five or a hundred years ago. But this trend won't continue forever. Maybe it will be sooner, maybe later (hopefully much later), but we are going to backslide significantly at some point or another, and depending on how bad we screw up, we could end up with something truly nasty on our hands. Think Joseph Stalin was bad? Imagine him at the head of a world government with all of the military and information technology we have today. Imagine him at the head of a world government with all of the military and information technology that we'll have in a hundred years. Three hundred. A thousand. Freedom could quite literally be extinguished forever.
Now, it could be said that space settlements won't protect against the formation of such a repressive government. That's true, although having a 'safe haven' that political dissidents could flee to, protected by millions of miles of hard vacuum, couldn't hurt. The liberation of the Earth by space settlers in the event of such a world dictatorship is also a possibility, the same way that the U.S. helped liberate Europe and China across the seas. But what I think is really important is that even if such a dictatorship existed on the Earth and stayed that way forever, freedom could continue to exist elsewhere. If the U.S. and the Pacific and every other free country on the Earth eventually became totalitarian nightmares, there could still be freedom off-planet. While it is possible that a 'Solar dictatorship' could exist, I believe that it is impossible for true domination to persist at scales larger than that, due to the sheer distances involved in star travel, which is why freedom would always persist: the migration of free-floating space colonies could proceed indefinitely. It would be as if the European settlers had not found America as it was five hundred years ago, but rather, had found a number of truly uninhabited continents, and after that, had sent ships farther west and found still more uninhabited continents, and still more after that, and more after that, and on and on and on. The opportunities for freedom to thrive would have been endless, and it would have taken root in at least some of the societies that formed. So it will be with spacefaring societies.
Lastly, I suppose I believe that it is the 'spoiled-kid-never-satisfied' character of humanity that makes us great. I think Jeff Fecke describes it best:Well, if this is arrogance--exploring space for science, pushing the envelope of the human experience, doing what our species has always done--then I support it. If it is arrogant to want to learn, we are arrogant. If it is arrogant to want to explore, we are arrogant. If it is arrogant to risk our lives for the possibility of a better future for all mankind, we are arrogant.
Mankind is arrogant. We believe foolish things--that we may one day cure cancer, that we may one day develop new forms of energy, that we may one day walk on Mars. We believe these foolish things, and we dedicate ourselves to achieving them. How ridiculous. How arrogant.
And people die for these things. And people are injured for life. The astronauts of Apollo 1, and the Challenger, and now, sadly, the Columbia have died for the arrogant belief that we can be more than we are, that we can walk on the moon, that we can touch the stars.
This arrogance is not American in nature. It is human. It is human arrogance that led us from the veldt of Africa to the ice-bound wastelands of Europe, across the Bering Strait into the Americas, across oceans to Australia and Oceana. It is human arrogance that leads thousands of people to live in the frigid environment of Antarctica, that leads explorers to dive miles under the oceans in bathyscapes.
This arrogance is our species' birthright. It is what defines us. If we were not arrogant, we never would have flown. We never would have domesicated the horse. We would have died in the caves, unwilling to strive to be more than we are.
So call us arrogant for building the space shuttle. Call the men and woman who gave their lives today arrogant for believing they could fly to space and return to tell about it. But don't call us wrong. For this arrogance defines humanity. And I would rather our species be arrogant than afraid. Well said, Jeff.
thus ranteth Pericles v. 2.0 at 2:17 PM | Permalink |
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the rave scene of matrix sux : i tought it was the Nelly video "it's gettin hot in here"
and i still think there're too many action scenes....people are always talkin about how cooooooooolll the kung fu scenes are but MAtrix is a good movie BECAUSE the theme of this "eventual AI future" is sthg that scares people. If it was just a kung fu movie, i would have said..ok nice fight but this moivie sucks
it's not supposed to be a bruce lee movie and i think the directors focused too much on that to appeal to the most numerous audience condidering that a few people can understand the story (it's quite different from XXX, uh???) . i don't think matrix is a movie for vin diesel's fans and it 's tending to be, that's what disappoint me.
i hope the last one will be good, it's true that we can't really talk whitout havin seen the entire trilogy but i hope they won't put an other scene such as the highway-terminator-style one who really really lasts too long!! i almost slept :)
for china....i don't see the problem.....they're too many anyway :)
seriously..this is typical of the "spoiled-kid-never-satified" character of the human being..What the fuck are we gonna do on the moon?? maybe we think that we should destroy and pollute an other planet. and considering the actual mess on ours, we should first focus on that.
thus ranteth amelie at 2:56 AM | Permalink |
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![[pic]](http://www.arches.uga.edu/~colinsfx/LW/fruit.jpg){kind=link}