Tigranes

Actually, what I was given is basically babelfish. It really irks me because some of their terms, of course, are actually used in the program itself and I can't change it - so the manual is going to end up a hodge-podge of bad and good English. Also, it is beyond me why they have a 300-page manual for such a simple programme; EVERY SINGLE WINDOW and EVERY SINGLE BUTTON is explained. That means over a hundred instances of "SAVE: This button saves all entered information".

I'm working from home translating this software manual for this Korean company. The problem is, they tried hiring some hack in Korea to translate it to English for them, and now half the manual is in broken English and I don't even know what it's meant to say.

Not for me! It was a great game, and I thought it was pretty funny to see Kaka slam the ball on the ground then get booked. Probably one of the few genuinely nice guys in football, though.

Quickly, here: If contemporary democracy is suited for the normalisation of extremes, it is also highly susceptible to the manipulation of what is normal both by a) a small group of determined individuals, thereby bringing the concept of democracy into irony, and; b) the nonsubjective social forces, exposing the fundamental weakness of a collective decision-making body.

Some losses, indeed. Our indoor football season, where we won every single game, ended in a rather odd affair where the other team was a man down (a hefty disadvantage in 5-a-side), but this old gent who looked exactly like Robin Williams proceeded to body-block every single shot, winning the game for the team.

I can understand why Bioshazard made this thread, as indeed, our other thread is ostensibly for recommendations only. However, in reality, a lot of discussion goes on in that recommendation thread, so we might as well pool our discursive energies into one (offblast!). If any of the participants here wanted to carry on an honest discussion of any anime and manga, feel free to do it here.

Dunbar's Number, and it is approx.150. Nevertheless. I think there is a general impression in our society that globalisation means locality is being replaced by the global and we will soon have to think and do everything in global terms. I don't think that's true, for reasons Krezack pointed out; that is ultimately unsustainable because humans (as we know them) simply can't care enough or understand enough about such large scale operations. What globalisation will do is, in time, retain the compartmentalised nature of our societies and activities but control the type of localities that spring within those 'compartments'. In other words we're not replacing 60 countries with 1 megacountry; the 60 countries will still exist (and may evenb reak down further), but there will be a sort of 'global committee' over the top of these countries that control the doors that open, the passages that link them, the ideas that float in the air infectiously across these countries. The 'committee', of course, is actually nonsubjective, so this is not a conspiracy theory.

There are numerous 'natural' responses that we humans in our society and our period possess, such as instinctive repulsion against murder and cannibalism, but also smaller things like our standards of aesthetic beauty (which has changed); 'natural' responses which have since proven to be not so 'natural' or at least mutable, such as repulsion against homosexuality as a primary orientation: still others which are 'natural' to some but not so 'natural' to others. By what standard can you divvy these up and say, some are social factors and others are timeless, intrinsic human qualities? We can postulate that something like revulsion against murder is 'instinsic' and it will sound correct, but I suggest that is only because it is such a deep-seated belief that it seems more 'natural' than, say, thinking anorexic women are 'hawt'. But this may simply mean a more lengthy sequence of embedment, a more deeply installed social norm, and not a completely 'natural biological' response. How can we tell? Which is it? Probably impossible to empirically prove until we can produce completely controlled environments where humans grow up with absolutely zero social influence (the moment they see a research professor, that is social influence), but we can make some guesses. Let's begin with your idea about the stigma against murder. You say we have to condition soldiers to shoot to kill, the result of which is psychological problems. Of course! If we for a second assume the repulsion against killing other humans is not a biological natural response, this example does not fail. On the contrary, these soldiers have been raised to be normal citizens in our society. In other words, by the time they enlist at the age of sixteen, seventeen or older, they have already been fully conditioned by social norms to deplore and be disgusted by killing of humans. In other words, they have been conditioned over twenty years, extremely well, extremely carefully, twenty four hours a day, that murder is deplorable. Now, you then send them off to the army for a couple years' training: how is that kind of social conditioning going to overcome the previous kind of social conditioning? You are not thinking of the social conditioning AGAINST murder that has already occured. Another way to expose this social conditioning against murder is to consider the acceptable forms of murder our society accommodates. For example, a young man volunteering for service in 1914 knows that it will likely result in murder. This, understandably, bothers him. But it bothers him nowhere as much as killing 'innocents'. If there was a biological, 'natural' response of disgust towards murder, then such a response would be predicated upon the very action of killing a homo sapiens, with no distinction as to his legal innocence or the political situation. But that is not how it works for us. While we are still shocked, and while soldiers still can have severe psychological problems, we find murder in war we deem as righteous, execution of criminals or whatnot much more acceptable, much easier to do; our 'natural' response to murder is much easier to repress in these situations. There is a clear gap between the response within a person who executes criminals as a job and a serial murderer. There is definitely reason to suggest that instead of being hard-wired in our biological bodies with a natural 'dead human=OH MY ****ING GOD', our reactions against murder, stratified and categorised as it is, is heavily dependent upon the social norms and our education/environment. That is not to suggest that devoid of all society, the primordial man would look at a corpse and not blink an eye. There is a possibility he would still recoil in this biologically instinctive terror. Yes. But what I am saying is that this biological, natural response is not something so dominant, as you imply, that social conditioning struggles to overcome it; even in extreme, deep-seated responses such as to murder, social norms are much more powerful and they can overturn, encourage, or distort these responses in amazing ways.

Krezack: Google for a Firefox plug-in that allows you to adblock things. I think Eddo is less of a postmodernist than that Eddo is postmodern.

Our social norms as a system produce our comfort zones. We don't have a set number of 'natural' things we feel comfortable or uncomfortable about in a 'natural' way. The way we live, where we ilve, how we live all determine what our comfort zone is. And guys, you can adblock the avatar.

Yep. Just because we are foreclosed to the idea of cannibalism does not mean that it is a universal and timeless real 'truth' that any form of cannibalism is completely despicable. We are not 'naturally' predisposed to be disgusted by cannibalism, anyway. If pushed we can eat it just fine; if we don't know it's human meat we'll eat it just fine. I'm not saying let's eat it, by the way, and I'm glad I came here after Eddo removed the direct image tag, but what we currently eat is pretty darn disgusting if you look at it from a different perspective, you know. Like that cover-lard in cans of Spam. Gah!

I think this one just popped into your head Eddo, but it's a complete logical fallacy unfortunately: Even one 'proven' or 'professed' terrorist is more likely to in the future cause harm to people, infrastructure and society than a thousand 'innocents', and therefore the question is invalid. And yes, this is how society works. Our legal system will put ten men in jail before they are allowed to murder one person. China's survival or prosperity doesn't depend on the defeat or submission of the US as a nation, and therefore this is a completely irrelevant question. I don't mean to be confrontational Eddo, by the use of terms such as irrelevance and logical fallacies - feel free to point out any such errors in my arguments as well. I am using them in the context of logic rather than in context of you as a person or your intelligence.

Let's keep signature discussions out of this thread, shall we? It occurs to me the different professions one could try out for extended periods of time would be where the real fun lies. You could try and forge a career in music; write novels; stewardess; baker; webcomics; whatever. I'd love to try Architecture, for example, but I have such a dirth of talent in areas such as visual creativity and drawing it would take me years and years.

The Cradle is pretty damn scary. I think my first playthrough got corrupted just before the end, and I managed to see that level. I think. About a third of the way through now. Even on low-medium settings it lags a bit on my crappy computer, but it's still very enjoyable - I had fun jumping down from above to club a Pagan, then arrowing another in the head for instant kill before he even noticed.

tarna: Fair enough, and I am aware, but at the moment I'm working on the fact that I have a personal grudge with nobody at all and I'm fairly off the radar, living in New Zealand and still just a university student. I plan to step it up in terms of taking care of the info I give out when I move to US/Canada/Europe or get a job.

That's 5kg right? That's not bad for three weeks (without killing yourself through starvation). Just as a testament to how much lifestyle matters; friend of ours left for Korea for two and a half months; quite a chubby fellow. Hadn't intended on losing any weight at all, but he worked his butt off - especially since he was visiting a lot of clients every day in close proximity, making for lots of walking. We greeted him last week, sans seventeen kilograms and a rather moderated appetite, just from the lifestyle change. It remains to be seen how long this newfound litheness will last back in New Zealand.

Well, that's one massive pruning; next time, closure! And we all know that every time I close a thread, Jesus cries. Listen guys - some of you are being 'mean' in the way of playground bullies and you know it; I don't think I need to say a lot here. Don't take the bait, move on. Find greener pastures in other threads. Let's see if we can all be a little more considerate to those we may not identify with.

I always thought one of the things that isn't considered so much, about these things, is the social effect. Generational gap, and all that. To an extent, we die so that new ideas, new cultural norms may come into the fore, and older ideas and practices may die out. If we lived for a thousand years, with the gorgeous, supple bodies of twenty-year-olds, wouldn't some of them definitely hold on to power and money and prestige for decades or even centuries? I wonder if that may mean that society begins moving at a much slower pace (sort of an Elf effect), because if you try to do funny things like gay rights, you'll have politicians saying BACK IN MY DAY WE BURRRRNT WITCHES ON THE STAKE, NO GAYS, NO SIRREE. Personally, well. I don't think it's possible to run out of things. You could lead so many lives. You could live lives anew in places like Greece or India or Japan; move around countries every few decades and get fully immersed. You could try different professions, wacky ones you always wanted to do like, uh, bakery or something. And oh dear, all those media products to consume. Looking at it from now, I'd probably choose death in a few hundred years; certainly before the 1000-mark. (And before the robots rule the world.) But who knows. It's probably for the best that we cannot choose the date of our death - though it'd certainly help if we lived a bit longer than, oh, 80. Personal experiences with death? Zero. Hell, the worst I've ever had is being hit by a car at 20km/h (the tofu i was carrying went splat and I, uh, had a sore bum), pneumonia (out of hospital in a week), smashing into a sharp column and getting a scar on my eyebrow. Oh, and a pine cone fell from this really high tree while I was walking down the road once. I'm convinced it would have destroyed my skull had it struck.

Thief 3: Deadly Shadows. I finished Thief 2 except for the final level, which I'm told is excruciating. I enjoyed it, but I still prefer Thief 3, actually. I know that's probably because I came into the series by playing 3 first, but the following things get me: 1/ You gots to go to menu to see Objectives and Map, which really lags. 2/ In Thief 3, you don't get stuck outside a doorway for ten minutes trying to get in, or get killed because Garrett has forgotten how to straddle window-sills. 3/ Sticking to walls, climbing walls. Again Thief 3. Exploration in the city is also fun. 4/ The story is pointless and silly bollocks in all Thief games, so I ignore it, anyway. I just wish the Pagan levels were gone altogether, Thief isn't about all that magic and hokey pokey. If they wanted 'nature' levels in Thief you'd think they'd let you climb trees or something. Parallel, a round of Icewind Dale+HOW+TotL; I prefer IWD2 so it's been a while since I did this. 4-party; an old ex-war leader Fighter who likes his discipline, a young Druid who just wanted to study possibilities of peaceful human-nature cohabitation in frozen arse conditions, a halfling Thief with a relatively pragmatic viewpoint but not necessarily coldhearted, and a Qaralike mage. Sure, they're all stereotypes or slight variations on stereotypes, but I find that the fantasy genre really, really lock you in quite a lot. Everything's a stereotype or a stereotypical denial of the stereotype, which is even worse.

Wals: the only details I have on there are my name, birthday, gender, where I go to school. Frankly, that's a level of info I give away to just about everyone - but no photos or whatever, no sir. But then, hey, I don't actually use my facebook. I just accept the friend requests and go dumb.

I went to sleep at 9pm, woke up at 5am, watched the football, rejoiced at the (literally) last kick of the ball equaliser, wrote notes on Judith Butler (who is absolutely, absolutely horrendous. I can read Foucault. I can't read Butler. Reading her is trying to trace a repetitive, yet displaced, unusual mind looping back and forth in rhizomic bursts), went to church, played two hours of basketball, an hour of football, had dinner, came home. Now reading Ray Oldenburg, whose works are sadly largely unavailable in our university. I'm tired, but I'll probably get my second wind once I delve into my new Icewind Dale campaign, so we shall see.

Oh, now look what you've done Gromnir. Now we have to see it.

Yes, god forbid that he makes a choice to join the army, right?

Victoria, BA Honours in Media Studies. And yeah, I only have 2 hours of classes a week this year.. 9-11am Wednesday. So I got up, went into town, couldn't catch the bus up to the campus because I had no cash left after the drinks ( ), then the second bus came late, so I was about, uh, 45 minutes late to class. Then as soon as I go in the lecturer says, "look, two hours are too long, let's just do an hour and a half." So I missed half the class time of the entire week. No big loss though, apparently he was rambling pointlessly for 45 minutes non-stop before I came. Media Studies Honours is basically DIY, you see. I make it a point to never get drunk (or get close to drunk), so I don't have any problem with drinking whenever. I never go beyond tipsy. Speaking of car crashes, I missed the only car crash I might have witnessed in my entire life because I was in the toilet. We were all coming back from skiing (~6 hour drive after not much sleep), and the guy just turned into a busy street and went poof, about 2 minutes away from returning the rent car... I came out of the petrol station and there was this car in the middle of the road with the front all crunched up. Nobody was hurt at all, and insurance paid for it, but heh.

Probably has more to do with other factors working in concert with intelligence/education. e.g. The latent discourse that mothers are still disadvantaged in their careers, while fathers are not as much: the fact that these more intelligent women with careers and higher income / social status are not as keen to get in divorces involving children: etc, etc. Still, this doesn't necessarily hurt your point, Architect. Idiocracy had some excellent (and scary) points to make actually - e.g. the electrolydes in their energy drink. It's not so different from us gulping down imported food from China, high fructose corn syrup in US food, frozen food from god knows where, etc, etc. Why are you giving your plants this energy drink instead of water? It's got electrolydes in it. What's electrolydes? It's what plants love! *guffaw* Why do they love electrolydes? Cause...cause... MAN ITS GOT ELECTROLYDES, MAN.