Towle_

Personally, however, 'reverse' anything makes me think of "reverse racism," my least favorite phrase ever. Even in the absence of any political agenda, just taking the term at face value, it doesn't make any damn sense. Racism against white people is still racism. There's nothing 'reverse' about it.

But honestly, one must sympathize with their desire to protect their brand. They don't need "their" photos to be the source material for the entire internet's memes and jokes. Let somebody with less at stake fill that niche.

This seems a tall order, if you plan to base the story around Master Chief. Now that's not a necessity, of course... but this is Halo.

Master Chief is a vessel character, like Neo from The Matrix or, dare I mention it, Bella from Twilight. The idea is for you, the individual audience member, to slip yourself into that hollow vessel and become the character. Master Chief is me. I am Master Chief. We are one in the same. You are also Master Chief. Master Chief is also you. By design, vessel characters have literally no personality. They should say and/or do nothing which would upset the illusion that you are them. Neo never says anything smart, never says anything stupid, never makes a moral choice we couldn't all see ourselves making. Hell, he hardly even talks period. Same goes for Master Chief. Obviously, you can write for/around a vessel character. The Wachowski brothers did it. But can you write for a vessel character whose story has already been told? Try and imagine, say, a prequel story where we watch young Master Chief running around military school or whatever. Did you imagine something boring? I did.

Why Facebook Can't Genuinely Connect People

"But there are specific factors, or accelerators, that trigger such connections -- and there are three that Facebook is seriously lacking: Physical proximity, vulnerability and a clearly defined community."

He goes on to discuss how and why Facebook lacks each of the three.

Mere hours before lamebook was hacked together:

"You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole."

/irony

What? I'm not making value judgments.

This is absurdly simple. If people have reason to believe that their efforts will be in vain, then they make no effort. But it's worse than that with socio-economic groups. Some members come to rely on the group's official explanation for lack of success, in order to maintain self-dignity. Those members hold back the others in their group to the best of their ability, else the official defense of mediocrity be disproven.

A great example is the Irish Catholics in America. "No Irish Need Apply" signs? Never happened (in America). http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm The myth of The Other keeping them down was necessary for them as a group. Even up through the first half of the 20th century, they insisted they were being held down as the explanation for their much lower income levels relative to white Protestants. Then came 1960. JFK was elected. If one of your group can get elected president, there's no more need for excuses. Since 1960, Irish Catholics have grown more and more like white Protestants. Both have almost the exact same income distribution now. Catholic church attendance has plummeted since 1960, asymptotically approaching Protestant church attendance. The group stopped reaching for excuses, and things got better for them. Fast.

edit 1: A strong, telling corollary is that forced immigrant groups always fare poorer than willful immigrant groups. Always.

edit 2: How many generations removed from communist tyranny are America's Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants? How're they doing?

You mean like people of East Asian descent in Finland? ;)

I joke, but I'm also making a point. That's valuable if that's what they did, but we don't actually know if that's what they did; we don't know where their subjects grew up, not just their nationality but more importantly their immediate environment. We have no idea. The researchers make no attempt to detail those factors.

Why? Wouldn't somebody with a PhD doing a study on racial anything want to a) know those things and b) tell us about them? a) Yes. b) If and only if it supports their already-formed conclusion.

Sifting through sixrevisions.com ... they have some fantastic shit. Good writing, sure, but GREAT topics-- and that's such a rarity.

A big* high-five to abraham for the submission.

*The kind that makes your hand sting. Because I love you, that's why.

I will do no such thing, CNN.

I grew up in the DC metro area. It's a horrible place, don't ever move there. Where SF has an entrepreneurship draw and LA has a fame draw and NY has a money draw, DC has a power draw. People literally move there so they can take their shot at being the best Machiavellian sonofabitch they can be. There aren't any brainiacs around there. Some very smart people, sure, but no brainiacs.

They don't get it.

edit: Better than xkcd, depending on your sense of humor (i.e., whether you have one) is smbc-comics.com. Dunno how he licenses his stuff though.

A 5% increase in capital gains tax in 2011 shouldn't be enough for this movement by these people. They should be planning on holding onto their stock indefinitely, especially at places like Amazon with no ceiling. Why aren't they?

This is what makes this a dangerous road to go down.

Who is a loyal CNN viewer? According to CNN, he is educated and informed and secular and (implicitly) liberal. Also according to CNN, Sarah Palin is none of those things. So, it becomes part of the loyal CNN viewer's worldview to dislike her.

How can CNN re-confirm this worldview in their coverage of Tea Party rallies? Easy. Since the loyal CNN viewer knows he is educated and secular (after all, CNN told him so) then he knows he's against racists, who are neither. So CNN turns the Tea Party into a bunch of racists and makes Sarah Palin their leader. Worldview re-confirmed. "See! What did I tell you about that Sarah Palin lady..."

(Note that I am not making any judgments one way or the other about the Tea Partiers or Palin herself. I am just explaining how this works.)

It was started as a libertarian-minded movement with a Ron Paul flavor to it. Initially, the right- and left-wing mainstream media were unsure of how to cover the Tea Party. Their ideology of libertarianism was foreign to the two-party landscape, and the movement had no visible leader.

Eventually, the Tea Party gained enough momentum that non-libertarian politicians (most notably Sarah Palin) saw it as politically useful and started speaking at rallies. These politicians were not libertarians, however; most were neo-conservatives. They echoed some of the familiar Tea Party rhetoric, only what was politically palatable and made sense to the two-party world. The rest of the libertarian ideology was thrown in the trash.

Because of her familiarity to the public, both sides of the media identified Palin as the de-facto leader of the Tea Party. Her ideology replaced the movement's. The complex story of a decentralized, leaderless, libertarian-inspired grassroots uprising was replaced by the simple story of Palin leading a bunch of people who hate Obama.

Of course, you are what the media says you are. The rallies themselves began to draw more and more Palin crazies, after they were told it was her movement. Those are the people you see on CNN holding up the often-racist, always-illogical signage.

And that's how the Tea Party went from enlightened to bigoted.

1/7= .142857 repeating

2/7= .285714 rep

3/7= .428571 rep

4/7= .571428 rep

5/7= .714285 rep

6/7= .857142 rep

It's the same string of six digits, the only difference is which digit you start at.

Other way around, bro. Big federal aid started ~1980, THEN everyone went to college, THEN since everyone has a degree, you may as well hire up overqualified recent grads, THEN it becomes a semi-requirement you have a degree to be a receptionist.

C'mon, man. Whole nations worth of individuals don't just up and decide everyone needs a degree for no reason. That wouldn't make any sense.