really?
Things you only learn reading my wifes livejournal:
"Geographers party a lot"
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Things you only learn reading my wifes livejournal:
"Geographers party a lot"
I heap a great deal of blame for the current level of debate in the United States on the political correctness movement of the 70-90’s. The political correctness movement worked to remove words that could be perceived as offensive to certain groups. This focus on using language as a vehicle for social justice, in my view, cheapened the debate of real ideas. Using the logic of political correctness, the ideas of what you said became secondary to the words you used.
In the book 1984, George Orwell talks about a politically-driven language change. This idea of Newspeak grouped words into categories. Useful word to the government where grouped together as preferred words. Less desirable words were tolerated and harmful words were banned or outlawed. This idea of controlling vocabulary is used to control thought or more correctly thinking. When I can argue about the words you use rather then the ideas behind them, I can ban or criminalize ideas I do not agree with.
Paul Graham is one of the truly great thinkers of the Internet age. In his article “What You Can't Say” he said of said of the word heresy:
“In every period of history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were true or not. ‘Blasphemy’, ‘sacrilege’, and ‘heresy’ were such labels for a good part of western history, as in more recent times ‘indecent’, ‘improper’, and ‘unamerican’ have been.”
Political correct is one of these terms. We use it to rename waiter or waitress to server without thinking about whether the idea of distinguishing between the two is valuable.
Today, our national debate boils down to buzz words. Is choice better then life, security better then liberty, or compassionate conservatism better then tax and spend liberalism. This is the level of debate and it seems to go no further. None of these things are ideas or values.
We have cheapened debate and expression by over valuing the words over the concepts. The joke holds true, “Peace Keeper” missiles are just a dangerous as “Nuke Your Grandma” missiles. The idea is do we need a missile system that can hit any target on the planet. That is what I want to debate, not how whether peace keeping is good. The words are secondary.
"It is not the percentage of the chromosome it is how you use it."
-Darkside Girl.
"One day, I saw Jason Ellis doing a very hateful thing. So I had to do it to Novie." -AB
I do not need a sugar daddy, I need an aspartame daddy. -AB
You are freaking me out –Me
That is not hard I have nipples. –Darkside Girl
Oh my god. Comedy Central normally is better CNN, but to watch Jon Stewart kicking thier butts in preson. I know it is old, but J just sent it to me.
Wineshark, dog catcher and I took a road trip up to see a live fire demo from the Oklahoma Army National Guard 1st Battalion, 158 Field Artillery (MLRS). We had a total blast. Pardon the expresion.
Some of the 700+ picture we took
As you can see we got some great shots and even better video.
A big thanks to our host.
Heydan and other sites you enjoy may be harder to get too soon. Internet games and downloads will soon cost more. This is the future according to Congress.
BBC Report on U.S. House of Representatives has rejectioned Net Neutrality
First, why is the BBC/NPR the only news organizations that are covering this? Oh ya, ALL other media sources are owned one of six telecommunications companies. These companies are backing both this bill and the drive ageist Net Neutrality.
Let me start by explaining what I am talking about. Net Neutrality has nothing to do with you. They are not talking about your isp or even your blog/livejournal/photo hosting sites. What this has to do with are telcos and media service providers. ATT charging Google more to deliver movies then they charge your AOL to deliver your aunt’s cookie recipe.
The problem is that this means that ATT will make more money selling big pipe services, like movies. Your aunt’s email and your blog/livejournal/photo hosting site get ignored. In fact there is a financial incentive to lower their level of service to you. This will cause you hosting/email provider to have to pay the higher price to get ‘better’ service.
Take the example of World of Warcraft the wildly popular online game. Right now millions of players are subscribed to the game. The telco company makes the same amount providing the service for the game servers as they do for anyone else who wants that level of service (bandwith). The telco want to be able to charge them more because they use more of the bandwidth the telco already sold them.
The biggest problem I have with this is that the lines aren't the telco's to regulate in the first place. They were paid for by your tax dollars. Remember Al Gore invented the internet. Well he didn’t, but he did push to fund the building of it. The telcos were paid to build it by the tax dollars. In fact they went back several times to get more money to fund what is now a profitable enterprise. Stop and think about that.
Now go get involved:
Summer III classes started this week. Summer III is a 5 week session for crazy people who don’t like nice weather and vacations. I’m am taking two classes, intro to programming C++ and Government II. Originally I had scheduled to take intro to computers because I have to have it. For those of you who know some of the jobs I done for the past 10 years know, that was going to be a hard class for me. There was a big danger of me yelling “No, you are stupid and wrong” to the teacher. However the gods smiled on me and one of my classes from TCU covered that requirement. Hence, I am spending Monday-Thursday nights in classes.
By the end of the summer I will be a sophomore once again. Which begs the question how much longer do I have to go to school? Well I have two goals. One is to get an Associates of Science in Computer Science Field of Study at Collin County College. Two is a Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering, perhaps from UTD. Let’s start with that Associates degree, at the end of summer I will have 25 of 51 hours completed. Taking 3 classes winter and spring and 2 during summer that is 24 a year. Make it a round year and a half to be safe. That puts me done by end of winter 2007, not too bad. Bachelor of Science is a ways off. It takes 124 hours of which I will have 51 complete. Again, taking 3 classes winter and spring and 2 during summer that is 24 a year. That is a little over 3 more years. With some wiggle room that is spring 2011.
I will be 42 years old and that is if I pass every one of my classes. Sometimes, it does not pay to do the math.
Puritan Work-Ethic, How I Loathe Thee
Finally, someone other them me thinks unlocking levels or options sucks! I am a video game recreational user, not a junky. Although, I think my wife would witness for prosecution on that charge. I play a handful of hours in a week and can not compete with players who spend literally 4-12 hours a day playing. The truth is I don’t want to. What I want is to play the game I bought.
Modern game theory draws players in by giving them incentives to keep playing. The incentive started out with new stuff to fight or new tracks to race on. That got expensive fast. Creating content is expensive, I get that. Creating a dozen tracks to race on without making all of them look the same is hard. When Icewind Dale the sequel to Bolders Gate came out, I went through the whole game in one sitting. Granted it was a 19 hour sitting, but hey. I never had to go though the same area twice. Yes, the game seemed short.
Story is also a key element of game theory. Icewind Dale and Bolders Gate both had storylines that I enjoyed and followed. The same was true of the Diablo, Star Craft and Age of Kings series. Not all storylines are interesting or that easy to fallow. Castle Wofenstine is a great example. I played the demo; you remember the one with the multi-player beach assault with flam-throwers, sniper rifles, grenades and machine guns! OMG what a fun game. When the game came out I bought it right away. What I found was long walk with a pistol searching for bad guys that seemed to know where I was. I might have enjoyed the story, had I seen any of it.
The elements of incentive and story have gotten way out of hand. I own a PS2. It is unlikely that I will upgrade it to a 360 or PS3 anytime soon. The problem is not the system but the games. Today when I buy a console game what I get is one maybe two things I can do.
Take Grand Turismo, great game play if you have spent 300 hours unlocking cars, tracks and races. What if you want to pull it out of the package and race with a couple of friends? Bad idea. You get two tracks for multi-player and you can choose anyone of three colors of Toyota Camry or Honda Civic you want to race. This is Grand Turismo, the game that lets you drive an Enzo Ferrari. The greatest car ever built. By the time I unlock the cool car none of my friends (also recreational users) will want to race ageist me! Great game, never going to by version 4.
I love consol race game. The only consol race game I play any more is the Burnout series. It has the same problem as Grand Turismo with the exception of it is more fun to wreak a Toyota Camry or Honda Civic.
Game developers, please hear us. Not all the people who buy your games are 13 years old. Some of us have only a small amount of time to play before the world needs us back. Please let us have the big gun, fight the dragon and drive a super car into a gas truck at 180 miles an hour.
It is like a ray of sanity in a sky full of crazy...
Senator Reid enumerates issues gay marriage vote won't solve
Ok.... now this is funny. Video games are corrupting our children by exposing them to mindless violence, satanic images and sex, right?
Well the right-wing has the answer...
It includes:
"wield modern military weaponry" (read mindless violence)
"witness spectacular Angelic and Demonic activity" (read satanic images)
"Play multiplayer games as Tribulation Force or the AntiChrist's Global Community Peacekeepers" (I really wish it had said sex)
I guess it is alright if you are making any money off them.
Edit:
PatTheMad: Dude I didn't know he UN was owned by the AntiChrist?
Me: What, are you just not reading the right books (and burning the wrong
ones)? The UN is taking over the world and implanting RFID's in all
the chosen. They are putting fluoride in the water to poison our
precious bodily fluids!