Helianthus16

in certain ideologies subscribed to by some anti-imaginary-property proponents, this statement applies to the author of those words as well.

Bleh. The moment you start thinking "one of the most powerful and off putting military advantages that could have been deployed, in either Ancient, or Renaissance times, would have been hot air balloons." is the moment you start thinking 'What if sharks had lasers?"

The breathless "and then I thought"s and stupid hypotheticals: "How would the technological arc of the ancient world have been changed if Archimedes, and not Edison, had invented the phonograph?" are just another series of what ifs.

The universe didn't fucking happen that way. Archimedes doesn't have access to those ideas. You can't just wonder what would have happened if people had discovered the internal combustion engine in the bronze age, because that question is meaningless.

there are two of us here, though this will be my last post. I already inserted the qualifier into the discussion, way back in response to Charuru. I clarified your point. Karma's not important, but it does demonstrate how many people resonated with concepts; and as I already said, the flow of karma demonstrates that when you actually communicated, people agreed with you more.

Yeah, I'm really impressed with g0atbutt's results so far.

I do not understand why giving feedback about the usability of the link deserves downvotes. I didn't even understand what had happened when I was suddenly at a google log-in, shrugged, and closed the tab.

thank you.

maybe it's because it's late, because i'm cranky, or because i'm feeling elitist.

but i'm not going to read an opinion about physics on wired.com

i've got to have some scientific standards, right?

edit: ahahaha, i go to the link actually. LOOK THEY ILLUSTRATED STRING THEORY WITH YARN. GET IT? GET IT?

and the article doesn't say much more than the headline. oh well.

While everything posted in the first tier of comments is true, so-called stealth mode is not a inherently bad idea.

It just means you keep some things to yourself for a while.

niyazpk demonstrates an actual use of the word stealth: you've got an advantage that would be immediately obvious to someone doing the same crap as you. you don't have to do anything special to draw attention to how easy it is to do crap.

that's overused. "do the exact opposite," that is. superficial understanding without an actual construction.

if they feel like it.

This is true, but doesn't mean there aren't coordinators, actually skilled hackers who embrace the directionlessness even as they give it direction. It isn't _just_ foot-soldiers.

He thought that Anonymous was affiliated ("strongly linked") with Wikileaks, as if there was some secret backdoor agreement between them. Nutcase. There doesn't _need_ to be any agreement or promise between Anonymous and other parties.

neat idea, long way away.

I wasn't using a linear scale; I was in fact rather pointing out that one shouldn't, and even if one did one could hardly conclude China was more advanced.

Now we're getting a bit off-topic, so I'm going to close with the idea that women in China could still be considered largely submissive if the ratio is a third instead of a half if one were to really press the viewpoint asking "In what ways could gender equality improve?" but that's a bit of devil's advocacy I'm ready to let fall silent. ;)

In other words, China has much the same problems as the West and much the same successes. I posted in response to the statement "Much better then it's neighbors and also the West."

My point about foot-binding might have been off-topic, actually; I was trying to demonstrate that both cultures have, err, regrets about gender inequality in the past.

Yeah, and the first act of the Indian intelligentsia was against sati. It's easy to be against the most obviously wrong.

My point wasn't that reform hasn't happened, my point was objecting to the casual generalization of China as currently superior to the West in gender equality--by demonstrating the concrete sexism of the past.

Having ruled out the past since both West and China infringe gratuitously, what do we really _know_ about gender equality in China in the present day?

And I am the sort of person for whom a gender equality rating is strongly influenced by high ratings in tolerance for homosexuality and other non-gender-norm labels.

Add to this the fact that this vote _doesn't matter_ in the sense that deciding to turn it down isn't a final decision. This actually makes it easier for someone to vote against it for purposes of political expediency, knowing it won't affect the outcome as much. Voting in this meant much more jockeying for position.

As an irrelevant aside, I disagree with your present tense. Fractures are always existent within both Republican and Democratic parties; few congresses have been a matter of adding up the Ds and Rs except for on the few issues most bitterly fought over by D and R. In general these sub-divisions are the nature of the political beast.

then you're listening to simplistic explanations of politics.

the climate was such that the desire for Congress to do _something_ necessitated compromise for speed of decision. "No one actually read it" reflects the reality that the bill was _going_ to pass. the accommodations made for people who _would_ have been on the fence were made to speed the process.

Foot binding?

Not saying things might not be generally 'equal' for women in China now, but things are generally 'equal' for women in the West. For certain values of generally.

Seems to me societies have traditionally objectified/oppressed women world over.

I don't know why you don't see the racism as a portrayal of casual American incidental racism. It is not (in my view) an endorsement of casual American racism.

Yes, sez me. the point was to provide my opinion.

It wasn't a humorless public service announcement, it was a bitter statement about the absurdity of American culture and the fact that the commercial itself would reflect in no way on its profitability. The PR mess will cost them nothing--at least, nothing important.

I am using the artistic interpretive sense of the word 'analysis' here. The ideas presented in the commercial are a viewpoint.

It is an analysis that is a sales pitch because it says: we're so confident that we can tell you _exactly_ what the situation is, with an actually quite sad bitter self-awareness, and it won't make any difference.

"This is a stupid system [advertising and the crass mainstream] and I refuse to play. And I can tell you this to your face and you will still use me, because that's just how our world works."

>Besides the patronizing suggestion that people never actually put their money where their mouth is

That ain't a suggestion, that's the truth. And even if everyone were committing a significant proportion of their resources, it still wouldn't change the really bizarre affinity Americans have for taking causes and turning them into ways to make money. I believe I already mentioned the Rainforest Cafe.

I really don't think you're cynical enough, and just personally irritated because you actually donate.

Anyhow, Groupon doesn't care about customers like your wife/you. Groupon will continue to make money, for one thing; but not only that, Groupon doesn't need customers that are told what to do by advertisements. And if you're making a purchasing decision based on an advertisement, that's exactly what you are doing.

The goal of Groupon's advertisement was to not be an advertisement, but a stated fact. I hesitate to say it was an anti-commercial because it is still actually promoting its product, but it is definitely flipping off every other superbowl commercial for taking itself so damn seriously.

Finally, I'm assuming you know that Groupon is matching donations for the various causes. The way it's not making this clear actually makes me respect them more, because waving the size of your donation-dick (that's the second time I've used that phrase tonight, how old am I?) is just another form of crass advertisement.

It seems right now that liking it is the minority view, so I'll throw up what I like about it real quick.

General advertising culture crassly manipulates desires in a way that I find insulting. This commercial purposely fucks that manipulation up. It's like a middle finger to the soulless beer commercials that I find tiresome, the "being told what to like" mentality.

This commercial also has a point, in an Emperor's Clothes sort of way. People are angry because they don't like feeling like their concern for whales, Tibet, or the cause du jour is insincere even if they aren't doing much to actually contribute.

If you're offended, step back and look at why. Is it because you don't like thinking about how absurd American culture is (in effect if not intent), importing Tibetan food for trendy twenty-somethings to enjoy, turning concern for rainforests into absurd Disneyland-style Rainforest Cafes. Because that's a _true_ analysis. If you're upset because a commercial is an _accurate portrayal of life_, then that's not entirely sensible.

On the other hand if you're upset because "They didn't do commercials right, they're supposed to follow a pattern/distort data/just be funny," I'm unimpressed with your orthodoxy.

The world is absurd. I like a company that is willing to spend millions of dollars to point that absurdity out using itself as an example. People aren't going to stop buying groupons because of this ad, and a successful ad campaign wouldn't save them from going bust like Pets.com (as is documented elsewhere).

In other words, _this ad meant nothing anyway,_ and it embraces that to actually be pretty funny and insightful.

In my opinion.

It is arbitrary but so far as it is my own, it is also most people's, tying into my point about clarity of definition. Chattel slavery means the public acceptance of slavery--slave markets, the fugitive slave act. Chattel is a legal term connoting legal approval of slavery.

It is also what people think of first when someone starts talking about slavery. Alongside chattel slavery was indentured servitude, which might well fall into your definition of slavery.

>You're trying to claim that slavery doesn't exist because you want to make it be only something exactly the same as plantation era slavery

No, I am not. I am asking you to be more precise in your language, because typing off a one-line post about non-hypothetical slavery was confusing. Notice how more people upvoted you when you were expanded the precision of what you meant by slavery?

Yeah, I'm perfectly willing to admit I was being smug, though I might prefer the term coldly critical or openly irritated. Your deflection of my criticism does not address my criticism, it merely weakly attempts to declare it unimportant. "You're smug too!"

Additionally you have failed to address anything about my point concerning precision of definition, except perhaps _very_ obliquely by using the phrase "real modern slavery" to deselect chattel slavery.

I do not question that some (many) form(s) of slavery exist(s). I was the one that suggested a form of slavery you might have meant.

When your terms are overbroad, you fail to communicate (as has happened in this topic). Clarity is your responsibility as a writer.

speaking as someone whose college education was aided by a significant amount of AP credit, this is a silly thing to brag about. Schools will vary by which AP exams they accept and how many hours they award, and I'm sure this is true about all pre-college transfer credit.

It's at least equivalent to bragging about your SAT score.

Because all of what you said about how we think has nothing to do with the informational density of the two formats. Words trump pictures for complex ideas.

It is possible to link all of these happenings by the single term "slavery" but that does not make it prudent for the course of communication. In your original post you elucidated images of chattel slavery, the actual written right to own another person within the law, which does not exist in the United States. In practice there are other forms of slavery, of course, as you demonstrate, some more subtle and some less.

But don't fall into the trap of over-applying the label, particularly one as loaded (in the US) as slavery.

Also, your smugness is... well, smug. Yes. Yes I did know about that. Stick to the information and cut out the assumption that you're delivering a revelation, because you're not.

However, I appreciate your bitterness and rage towards the unfairness of the world.

GDP is one measure of a country's power. I should point out that measuring the GDP of India prior to British imposition is a little bit hairy since India was not really a singular political entity.

Besides, my point was never that India didn't suffer; my point was to illustrate some of the advantages of colonial rule and demonstrate _just how muddy_ the interference of a technologically superior culture can become.

I actually think it's just that difficult a problem. Whether we decide to contact them or not, in a sense we're still deciding _for_ them whether or not they will have access to technology that will fundamentally reshape their culture.

In a sense it also isn't our place to _care_ if _they_ decide to fundamentally reshape their culture based on what we "give" them.

Both of these viewpoints have been important in world history. Would Africa be so violent if there were less people selling them guns? Is it our right to _not_ sell guns to people if we know they're going to be used for violence that is, in our eyes, senseless?

Mostly I see polite disagreement in this topic. If we're putting words in mouths, it's because those words are the natural conclusion proceeded to upon viewing the actually mouthed words from the opposite perspective.

I'm not assuming anything, I'm making an assertion--an assertion that could be right or wrong. In particular I am not assuming/asserting that India or S.A. would not have made progress.

I am saying that the effects of colonial rule are so unstable and so varied that it can be difficult to the point of meaninglessness to say a country would be "better" or "worse" without it.

The Bengal Renaissance is a documented movement, founded and driven by people exposed to Western thought. That doesn't mean the movement wasn't theirs, that they weren't the ones producing "intellectual" information. But they were in a different place because of colonialism than they would have been without, one where Indians went to school in Britain and where people were writing letters to each other across the ocean.