The satisfaction I get from retiring with a book (and a scotch) - away from the machines and devices I use for all of my other activities, including work - is something that would pain me to surrender. To be able to have entertainment and educational experiences that aren't digital in nature is enormously important.

Furthermore, content that is expressed digitally is less satisfying to engage with, to appreciate and experience, than physical items. My wife is an artist and illustrator, and does much of her painting digitally... but to compare her art between printed and digital copies is deeply striking. The way that the light interacts with the paper, the apparent depth of the thing, and the layers of inks that express the image make for something entirely more complex than what one would experience on a monitor. A similar case applies to pure literature, but in a more subjective sense.

I maintain that I value the experience of reading a physical book far more than its digital counterpart. Not just because the material is something you're physically interacting with, but because of all of the advantages inherent to the book... a single, individual item, manufactured purely for the singular purpose that you experience of it. No distractions, nothing beyond the moment... and the capacity to disconnect yourself from the frenzied commotion of vast, limitless data.

From a purely pragmatic position, your statement makes sense. From a human one, you couldn't be more wrong.

Have you tried explaining to her what fascism is?

Fourteen Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt
Source Free Inquiry.co
5-28-3


Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

As much as I am against NewsCorp and everything it stands for, I have to absolutely agree with Mr. Koppel here and say that the internet helped facilitate this.

"But we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we're now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers."

With the incredible free flow of information and inevitable formation of online communities, everything in itself becomes a self-feeding information frenzy. The internet will conform to what you search for, and finding factual information is becoming more difficult as it get's crowded out by all of the misinformation sometimes out right lies that are posted every minute.

Every source can call itself as an absolute truth without fear of consequences, and sometimes do so purposefully in order to garner attention and "hits." This sensationalism has always existed and only gets more prevalent and easier to find now that online communities grow larger and more popular. The advent of more advanced search algorithms in search engines allow you to find that one specific article that you're looking for regardless of how true or untrue it is.

Nowadays people equate finding something on google to being true. These ever-increasing online communities almost guarantee that as long as a person sees a headline that supports a certain idea or that person wants to "fact check" someone's point of view/claim, he or she will find the article in question.

The only solution I see to this problem is to educate a person on how to find information on the internet for themselves. I myself have been using the internet for over 17 years, and I can see the people that do not know how to find information always go to single sources and don't do enough digging to find out if what in fact they read is true. This is becoming increasingly difficult as the prevalence of the use of the internet is increasing at a much faster rate than the knowledge one needs to be able to use it effectively and reliably.

The internet, as we all know, is serious business.

This really works. All you need is an annoying laugh and the right kind of fish.
http://videosift.com/video/Womans-Laugh-Sends-Asian-Carp-into-Flying-Frenzy

>> ^MrFisk:

dead


Could not find a replacement.

>> ^MrFisk:

dead


Could not find a replacement.

You rock!!!

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
34 now. My work here is done

In reply to this comment by arvana:
I know, right? Thanks!

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
Wait, what? 7 votes?

*quality

34 now. My work here is done

In reply to this comment by arvana:
I know, right? Thanks!

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
Wait, what? 7 votes?

*quality

I know, right? Thanks!

In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
Wait, what? 7 votes?

*quality

Your video, Frenzy on the Ocean's Floor, has made it into the Top 30 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This upvote is dedicated to schoolchildren in Texas.

Edit: Wow, they went a lot further with that than I thought they would. Definitely can see how that show got itself canceled right quick, the Potatoists would've gone into a frenzy.

What's your problem withis this video choggie?>> ^choggie:
^I'll agree it's artful-Highart???? Nahh. Some amateur wanker with a girl that agrees with him that her bodys' worth a peep.....She kinna feels herself up a bit awkwardly, maybe it's her first time on camera. Maybe its the first time farhad has seen titties that big onna redhead-MAAAybe, farhad is trying to stir up the crowd into a frenzy with his erudite, sophisticated manner. Perhaps he, like most of you pathetic excuses for schizophrenic earth-dwellers in this current Piscean cusp of a paradigm, are addicted to porno like choggies' addicted to bacon??
Take your hand(s), off the DICK!!

^^^I'll agree it's artful-Highart???? Nahh. Some amateur wanker with a girl that agrees with him that her bodys' worth a peep.....She kinna feels herself up a bit awkwardly, maybe it's her first time on camera. Maybe its the first time farhad has seen titties that big onna redhead-MAAAybe, farhad is trying to stir up the crowd into a frenzy with his erudite, sophisticated manner. Perhaps he, like most of you pathetic excuses for schizophrenic earth-dwellers in this current Piscean cusp of a paradigm, are addicted to porno like choggies' addicted to bacon??

Take your hand(s), off the DICK!!

I do find the feeding frenzy of commentary here fascinating.

Here's my own angle, and why I opened my yap to begin with. I could immediately tell that this would be one of those videos that would sort people into two camps, one that says "this is awesome, more people should do this", and the other that says "this is horrible, what kind of asshole does something like that?"

I fall into the latter category. I think people in the other camp are broken human beings in some way I have yet to really understand.

To me, premeditated plans to hurt other human beings are not something moral people should do without a really good reason. "Because they stole from me" just isn't enough in my book, especially if you were intentionally trying to get someone to steal from you just to give yourself a justification for inflicting harm on another human being.

I keep throwing out examples where the items stolen are essentially worthless (pens, trudging on the grass in my backyard), and where the danger I'm secretly presenting to the "criminal" is high (explosions, both times), to see whether people defend that (as GeeSussFreeK did), or if someone who supports the filmmaker's actions will clearly take a stand against landmines and exploding pens as being immoral.

The closest I've gotten is Psychologic telling me that those situations differ from what's in the video in a special way (i.e. bikes are inherently dangerous in ways that pens & grass aren't), which at least implies that he thinks landmines aren't okay.

Most are pointedly ignoring those examples, and just tossing insults at the people who think the filmmaker did something wrong.

My point is really this: you libertarians and property rights aficionados have misunderstood your own credo. What's the first axiom of libertarian philosophy? Self ownership. A person's body is their property. Whatever else you might say about the thief, his body is his property, and the filmmaker knowingly and intentionally made an effort to damage it.

It's true that the thief could have avoided the danger. But you guys always tell me that we don't need safety regulations, because if someone gets hurt by the actions of another person, that other person owes their victim restitution (imstellar in particular gets credit for explaining that one to me a year or more ago). This is why the filmmaker should be free to endanger people without hassles from the state in the first place.

So, let me restate what I said in my first comment here: they both owe each other restitution. The thief stole from the filmmaker, and should make him whole. The filmmaker also intentionally sabotaged the bike, which may have damaged the thief's property (his body), so he owes the thief restitution to make him whole.

If you walk away from that, you are not defenders of equal, individual rights, you are just a bunch of fair-weather libertarians. You want your rights respected when it means you get to skip on having to pay taxes, but when it comes to having to defend people you don't really like, you're ready to toss them to the wolves (and film the carnage and sell it to people).

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Maybe stick to your happy little trees.

Just kidding, you make some very good points.>> ^highdileeho:
I'm going to try to be as nice as possible. Iv'e seen the microsoft version, Iv'e seen the mac version. I just want to know. When will anyone actually really need any of this crap. Is it just a fancy gizmo to be whipped out at coffee shops in the hopes that it will start a conversation? Or do people really need to cut and paste shoes, or boobs, or search the internet with a machine that isn't nearly as fast as the last gizmo that you bought. I don't get any of it, but I do understand that apple has whipped Americans up in this consumerism frenzy, to throw down hard earned cash on things that no one will ever really need. And these consumers will defend with seering lunacy it's ability to do things that no one needs better than any competetor. I'm just waiting patiently for the day when people have finally determined that they don't need anymore. Mr. Creosote lives