I liked the Hunger Games (first movie) enough that I decided to read the books. OK, but the third one went off the rails a bit and overall I felt like it would be better to try to get the YA audience to read Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, or 1984, all of which still hold up pretty well.

I haven't watched Divergent yet. Would you (or your wife) recommend watching the movie first and then reading (if I like the movie), or going straight to the books?

I finally started re-reading A Song of Ice and Fire, so this would probably have to wait a good while until I finish that, but I don't mind holding off if that would be the thing to do.

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No, dumbassess....Here's a 'strawman' for yas all:

The terrorists are created by a highly influential and financed cabal of cunts who need attention drawn away from their fascist police-state vision of something worse than Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and Nineteen-Eighty-Four combined ever thought about being imagined, in order to prepare the world for an end game fist-fuck without lube and wrist-watches the likes of which Bradbury, Huxley, or Orwell could have never fucking imagined in their worst drug-addled nightmares, This potential anything-goes scenario enabled, by willing participants who think they have a clue ready to doubly-assfuck the gullible into thinking that sophistic mumbo-jumbo is some kind of cure.

Get a fucking clue people, you're all cattle to the conductors of the most twisted opera of catshit ever perpetrated on the civilized world.

Now: Are these the words of a "troll" or simply someone with a clue tired of reading the rambling retardation of passionate idiots??

Seconding Artician. The brain evolved by natural selection, just like the rest of the body. It has built in biases and modules that vary genetically. Look at the wide variety of personalities in dog breeds, for example. In humans, the big five personality traits are estimated to be about 50% heritable based on twin studies.

Gattaca is a good movie and Brave New World is a good book, but they should not be taken as the ends of some slippery slope that any eugenic policy inevitably leads to. I think it's unfortunate that so much fear of eugenics is propagated by dystopian fictions like those. Eugenics can be done in a humane way that respects all individual rights. For instance:

1. a system of incentives for highly successful people to have more children or donate to sperm banks.

2. Universal single-payer healthcare, providing among other things free condoms and birth control pills to all, so that the use of contraception will not be so much inversely correlated with income as it has been from 1850 to the present when the poor often couldn't afford it (and it's a demonstrable fact that on average the poor tend to have lower intelligence partly due to genetics)

Even such modest, individual rights respecting policies, if phrased in terms of benefiting the gene pool, are political suicide because people are still afraid of imaginary slippery slopes leading to Hitler. Most of the US is still in denial of the implications of biological science, for reasons that speak well of them, but it's time to grow up and get over that habit of Godwinizing any attempt to improve the gene pool regardless of whether it infringes individual rights.

Or maybe lots of people people don't actually believe that, but are reluctant to say otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0W9sSqeJnA

Your video, New World Record Deadlift 1155 pounds World's Strongest Man, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

If the world ever needs a shake-up then going back to the phone-age (I mean phone calls, not texts and smartphones!) would probably do it. After the first few weeks of no internet I think we'd see refugees emerging from their houses and figuring out ways to survive in the new world

Tags for this video have been changed from 'get your war on, gywo, new world order, barack, obama, guns, muslim, harem, flag' to 'get your war on, gywo, new world order, barack obama, guns, muslim, harem, flag' - edited by xxovercastxx

In the interest of full disclosure is this observation from the Washington Times. Notice the quote from one of the Park Rangers.

The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.
“It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”


Yep. Kinder and gentler.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/3/pruden-the-cheap-tricks-of-the-game/

I wonder what this means for Tor, Hemlis, and similar alternative encryption-communication services... They also don't specify what level of encryption they cracked, so I guess... all of them? Sheesh.

I hate the New World Order, because it's run by men. Weak, greedy, amoral men.

Manning is no coward; neither is Snowden. Persons in our Govt should be feared.

"In his 2009 book, A Terrible Mistake, researcher H. P. Albarelli Jr. concurs with the Olson family and concludes that Frank Olson was murdered because a personal crisis of conscience made it likely he would divulge state secrets concerning several CIA programs, chief among them Project ARTICHOKE and an MKDELTA project code-named Project SPAN"

whistleblow much.. thanks to the internet now just ignorance and massive disinformation can still prevent the "truth", but its harder. progress? certainly.

brave new world on the exponential curve. running man, anyone...

I do have some anger issues-The crux of that issue perhaps possibly, my perception that I might be living in an era of mass-hypnotism of the planet's inhabitants through technologies envisioned originally to afford power now hi-jacked (and historically so) by charlatans posing as world leaders?

Another obvious turd lodged in my craw? How about a social-evolutionary path akin to Bradbury's "Fahrenheit" or Orwell's "84" turning an entire continent of what formerly consisted of self-determined, practical, and classically educated hard-working sorts into a cast of extras from "Idiocracy?"

Yeah, it pisses me off that so many people are distracted by what they are being told about some illusory process in which the common citizen might take part to imagine some bright future for mankind falling somewhere between the golden rule and the code of Hammurabi. The planet is being hi-jacked by a new breed of criminals frighteningly similar to the most egregious of old-For everything there is a season my friend, Solomon's wisdom in Ecclesiastes 3 it just as pertinent today as it will be for humans for the next 10,000 years-"a time to kill and heal, a time to break down, and a time to build up."

I'd like to imagine the new-construction-upon-the-ashes to include projects both organic and nano-technological in nature with the transformation of our specie's bodies, minds, souls and spirits as a prime objective.

You are living in these wonderful and frightening times, consider this incarnation your most favorable having been born when, where, how, why, and what you are-You are an amazing collection of cellular consciousness manifest in the wonder of flesh.
It's pretty fucking cool actually, and these are the ideas upon which I try to meditate upon every waking hour.

Oh yeah, and I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore, Hail Satan, Hail Eris, Jesus Saves.


(BTW, to answer your inquiry as to the "knowledge" that administrations keep in the dirty-little-secrets folder? Do you really have to ask about need-to-know information that would end the lives of yourself and everyone you know, because that's what the United States can do for you alla-Hoover, alla-Bush, alla-New World Order Über Alles.
What you think you know you don't, and you can't form an opinion or come to a conclusion on a subject for which you have incomplete data with which to arrive at those opinions or conclusions. Simple deductive reasoning or even a pragmatic model of the scientific method should make this screamingly clear to anyone who distrusts the anemically hostile Babylonian system .

My major problem with it is that the government/NSA claimed it disrupted terror plots because of it's surveillance. Am sorry but I call bullshit on that. Terror groups are aware of this kind of activity and wouldn't go planning anything. Human intelligence is still the best way of tackling this.

From my perspective this is just J. Edgar Hoover communist witch hunt excuses to basically keep taps on everyone Brave New World style.

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@Yogi
well said my friend.

ya know.
i was talking with @VoodooV on another thread concerning this topic.
he was of the opinion that this is all about perspective and to look at the bigger picture.

now i actually agree with that, but i think the perspective is on how we approach this subject.

@Yogi and i are not coming from some alex jones 'new world order" premise but rather a historical one.
we do not trust our government because our government has proven over and over they do not deserve our trust.

and as @Yogi alluded to,the list of abuses of power by the US government is massive and extensive.

remember in 2006 when it become public that the telecoms had call system rerouters in data collection?those small rooms?
and remember how the bush administration push forward to give the telecoms retroactive immunity to avoid any civil suits?

my main point is that whenever a government gains a new power or authority they WILL use it.since 9/11 and the "war on terror" (which is just a war on ideology) our government has broadened its power and authority ten fold and it HAS USED that power.

this is not opinion.this is fact.

guess it all comes down to trust.
do you trust this government to obey the law?
i dont because they go out of their way to be creative little monkeys to circumvent the law,or redefine it to suit their purposes.

i know i am going off on a rant here,so let me end with this:
historically empires in their last stages have always become concentrated centers of power and certain criteria have always become evident.
1.the over-reach of empires always culminate with an extreme disparity between rich and poor.
2.they become incredibly militarized.
3.infrastructure and commerce begin to break down.
4.nationalism reaches fever pitch.(see:tea party)
5.those in power (the governing class) tend to become more corrupt and less idealistic and begin to pick the remnants of empire for their own enrichment.hastening the demise of empire.
6.the ruling class becomes extremely paranoid and begins to focus its attention on its own citizens.seeing enemies everywhere.
7.power seeks only to further its own power and it becomes a cycle of cannibalism.

by my statements here i am in no way disregarding or dismissing some of the great achievements that have been won by this country.but those milestones were ALWAYS because of the people and not ONE was ever implemented by a benevolent government.

so while i trust the people i,in no way,trust my government.
because they have proven they do not deserve my trust.

I wasn't suggesting going to war with 22's-I was merely pointing-out the efficacy of an inexpensive, readily available all-purpose round that will never go out of style for small game hunting should the grocery trucks ever stop rolling....

My suggestion for preparation for the coming invasion-occupation??

To parents of newborns:Teach them Mandarin, it will serve them well as the new world unfolds-Oh, and definitely do what albrite30 suggested and purchase real estate: It's what every able-bodied, bouncing, banking Chinese national is doing with their worthless paper....China owns us, and they work on a 1000-yr-plan, unlike the United States, with our "see how this goes" 250-yr experiment.