Displaying comments 1 to 50 of 678
MeFi post:
A people too scared to vote.
Time to quit and, unfortunately, wait until the country collapses completely, so it can be rebuilt.
As bad as Zimbabwe is, I'm sure it could get a lot worse. A complete collapse would never be a clean slate to rebuild from - it would involve something like South Africa pulling the plug on Zimbabwe's fuel supply and setting a loose a starving, rioting Zimbabwean diaspora across the entire southern continent.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 10:50 AM on June 23, 2008
MeFi post:
Easy money
Wealth disparity is irrelevant to ongoing mass starvation?
I expect your own personal wealth is somewhat above that of those who are starving. How does your wealth cause them to starve?
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 12:20 PM on April 14, 2008
MeFi post:
Ten Thousand Cents
My point being--I find that most "conceptual art" is better in the idea and less interesting in the product. This product I find...ordinary. Interesting idea, yes very interesting, but the end product is not visually engaging, and I guess I need a weblink with words and stuff to know what I'm looking at--you know, to 'splain it to me.
I'm no expert, but isn't that the point of conceptual art? Art doesn't need to be visually engaging - just... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 8:51 AM on April 12, 2008
MeFi post:
BC brings in revenue-neutral carbon tax
I admire the effort, but I'm starting to worry that all environmental problems have been condensed into the word "carbon". We're doing a lot of nasty things to the environment, and putting carbon into the atmosphere is only one of them, and probably not even the worst.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 3:17 AM on February 28, 2008
MeFi post:
Subprime Artistry
If you're going to call the banks greedy, you should really call the mortgage customers greedy too. They knew they couldn't afford to buy a house (hence "liar's loan"), but bought one anyway.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 12:38 PM on February 17, 2008
I don't know, there is a fine line between credulous and greedy when it comes to thinking you're getting a deal. Those people wanted to believe they were getting a deal. They talked themselves into it, because the alternative was not getting a house. It's like buying stolen property from a dodgy market and rationalizing to yourself "well, I don't know that what I'm doing is wrong, so I'll just assume everything's fine". The banks wanted the deal to happen too, so... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 12:51 PM on February 17, 2008
MeFi post:
A Solar Grand Plan
Why on earth does the cost of the Iraq war always come up in these threads?
Because anti-war people who turned out to be right about Iraq like to rub pro-war peoples' faces in it, in the hope that this will win the pro-war people over to the anti-war worldview. But vindictive sneering just makes pro-war people hate us even more, and even less likely to come around to our side.
This is kind of obvious, but some people just have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 12:04 PM on February 17, 2008
What does that have to do with anything?
Nothing really. It's just why the Iraq figure always comes up. Not because it's new or relevant - just because it's cathartic, if deeply counterproductive, to axe-grind.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 12:27 PM on February 17, 2008
MeFi post:
"Leaving no trace [of our daily lives] is nearly impossible."
Of course, you might decide that your ability to use credit cards and be lent money for a house at lower rates because of credit scoring have some value. You might also like the fact that people can track who is in a hit and run due to licence plate databases. Also that you can gather information on companies to decide who to trade with.
All trade-offs of the database state.
The database society has many benefits; the database... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 11:57 AM on February 16, 2008
MeFi post:
Just put down your camera. Game over.
For what it's worth, the artist claims the light is not artificial. I like the images whether they're photos or not.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 4:35 AM on February 12, 2008
Real photography doesn't require hundreds of hours spent in Photoshop.
Surely it's the finished product that matters, not the tools used to create it?
I don't see how a photographer editing a photo in Photoshop is much different to a writer editing a book in a word processor. I expect there are writers who claim the word processor has had a detrimental effect on the institution of writing and that sentences should spring... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 7:09 AM on February 12, 2008
This brings up a curious point: Is there some limit to post processing a photo to the point where it's no longer considered a photo? If so, what does it become?
A photograph is a photo-graph, i.e. a graph plotting color as a function of a pixel's X and Y co-ordinates. As soon as you change the raw data, it's no longer an accurate graph, hence no longer really a photo-graph, but merely an "image".
Perhaps the test of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 7:41 AM on February 12, 2008
MeFi post:
Britain: we discovered the queue
England needs to reclaim a swathe of the North Sea as land or something, or maybe the South Coast near the Isle of Wight.
There's no shortage of space in Britain - just a shortage of space near London (and a couple of other major cities). One continuing problem that governments over the last 40-odd years have had is how to attract development to "the regions".
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 10:05 AM on February 6, 2008
MeFi post:
Segregation in Toronto Schools
If Canadian schools are anything like British schools, they are already failing black children on a huge scale, so trying something different might be a good idea.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 3:12 AM on January 30, 2008
Furthermore, why not try to teach African history to all students, along with Asian, European, South and North American history? Kids do get a lot of European history, although a lot of interesting stuff happened in other parts of the world as well.
Trouble is, there's just not enough time in the school curriculum to teach every topic that is interesting or important. To condense 6000 years of civilization down into a course lasting a couple of years... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 7:12 AM on January 30, 2008
MeFi post:
The world is going to hell in a hand basket, I feel fine.
Doomer porn! We do need a name for the phenomena, but I am not sure this is it.
Crisis cult?
Cult seems more appropriate because most of the worst Peak-Oil-type websites are selling something.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 11:26 AM on January 28, 2008
While we're thinking up new ways of advancing mutual understanding by labeling people, what's a good one for "someone who ascribes deficiencies in character to people based on opinions said people hold at that particular point in time"? Something pithy would be nice.
LOLbeling?
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 5:07 AM on January 29, 2008
MeFi post:
U2FU?
If the ISPs, telcos, Apple, Intel, Google, Facebook et al. are really making so many billions off the back of pirated music, then they should get together and buy the entire music industry outright, then use music as a loss-leader for their real products.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 4:34 AM on January 29, 2008
MeFi post:
Adequacy + Catastophe = Efficiency?
The idea behind universal healthcare (and, more broadly, socialism) is that the State will collect some resources and redistribute them -- not based on people's perceived worth (their wealth) or lack therof, but based on the notion that all human beings have intrinsic worth, including those who cannot afford the things they need to live.
Not quite. "Universal" Healthcare, as envisioned in this thread, is based on the notion that only... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 4:17 AM on January 22, 2008
Yes, a Universal Healthcare plan for the United States will not be "truly" Universal, as North Koreans, Saudis and others will not be covered while living in their own country. This is because they don't live under the jurisdiction of the State providing said resources. Maybe if we had an International State with the ability to tax and distribute resources that wouldn't be a problem.
Western-style healthcare is far too expensive for everybody... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 10:17 AM on January 22, 2008
MeFi post:
Singularity
Faster computing is not completely useless for generating better ideas. For example, something like the prime number theorem took a well-funded super-genius like Gauss to spot with pen and paper, but a prime-generating Python script and some plotting utilities would provide a strong visual clue to the pattern to anyone.
Perhaps the Singularitarian (?) position is that millions of people experimenting with powerful tools will be more likely to hit on the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 3:44 AM on January 22, 2008
MeFi post:
Look out below...!
Stop buying shit you don't absolutely need. Pay off your credit cards and debt. Cancel your cable TV. Implement personal austerity.
That's good advice recession or not.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 2:23 AM on January 22, 2008
MeFi post:
Tom Hodgkinson hates Facebook
Occam's version: geeks use computers to make money, while members of the public participate freely because they like it.
Guardian version: Facebook is a libertarian/CIA plot to take over the world, destroy reality, and replace it with a totalitarian virtual universe.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 2:32 AM on January 15, 2008
MeFi post:
Wait, this still isn't a victory, right?
It also shows, of course, that Bush's paranoid delusions have killed so many people that "mass murderer" is no longer a valid term, he's entered "attempted genocide" territory.
Nah, "murder" and "genocide" imply intent, but I doubt the warmongers ever sat down and said "Let's kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians!". No, they just didn't care. This is more like criminal negligence, but on a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 12:00 PM on January 10, 2008
MeFi post:
The end of net nuetrality.
Traffic management is the internet equivalent of taxing the rich. It hurts the 5% of users who are responsible for 95% of the traffic, while improving the connectivity of the rest. People complain about it on MetaFilter because people on MetaFilter tend to be top-5% super-users. We might argue that our top-5% activities are worthwhile and should be allowed to procede unfettered, but then so do rich people in the real world. I'd personally argue that both groups are right, but that that's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 1:43 AM on January 9, 2008
Western Infidels, I'll happily grant that it's an imperfect analogy :) I was going for the democratic angle: most people are happy to have the "freeloaders" capped in exchange for a better service for themselves, whether that's morally correct or not. And yeah, what Comcast are doing here is something else entirely.
Freen, since they charge a single price to all users, the heavy users don't actually pay for what they use - they are subsidised... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 12:58 PM on January 9, 2008
MeFi post:
Urban[e] Renewal
Underground motorways and corkscrew trams get my vote. And I guess it wouldn't make such accessible posters if your ideas were truly unrestricted by the laws of physics.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 11:25 AM on January 8, 2008
MeFi post:
Do not dig or drill before 12,000 AD
A few square miles of giant thorns? Trust me, our descendants will be sacrificing virgins/criminals/Gila Monsters to it at a distance of miles away in hopes of preventing its spread--no pictograph or character-based signs required.
Maybe we should bootstrap this culture of sacrificing virgins now just to make sure a system is already in place when the apocalypse comes.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 1:05 AM on January 4, 2008
MeFi post:
He's not, like, a garden item.
When in conflict, read Kipling's If and learn to take responsibility for your own words and actions: if someone even thinks you're trolling then you have failed to communicate, and it's still your fault even if you're right.
Merry Christmas, webjerks who can't afford a spare bedroom!
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 2:51 PM on December 24, 2007
MeFi post:
limits
Economic planning is a painkiller. It relieves the pain caused by fluctuating price signals, but we need those price signals to tell us when to stop doing things that are hurting us.
Any resource shortage will be worsened by attempts at economic planning.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 3:29 AM on December 20, 2007
MeFi post:
Tales from the Booze Bus
My latest theory is that airbrushed made-up televised superbabes and superhunks have raised our standards of beauty so high that everybody else seems ugly, and the only way we are able to bring ourselves to form relationships is by chemically damaging our senses.
posted to MetaFilter by hoverboards don't work on water
at 7:22 AM on December 19, 2007
