http://www.cracked.com/article_19453_6-reasons-were-in-another-book-burning-period-in-history.html
And it's not the sort of trend you can easily roll back - even leaving aside the argument that if you tried to create the public library system today, you'd become public enemy number one in the eyes of the MPAA and RIAA and the like; there's the point that for some reason, regardless of any evidence to the contrary, both the UK and Ireland have taken on Austerity like it was the Next Big Thing. Schools, hospitals, every public service is getting their already slim budgets whittled away at by a fairly hamfisted woodworker - and these are not areas we spent money in during the boom.
It's deeply depressing to watch :(
]]>And there are probably dozens of other reasons too...
]]>Of course, no business would be so underhandedly sneaky in the pursuit of a quick profit...
It's why I think that while nonperishable markets like books, electronic widgets of all kinds, furniture and so on, can and probably will be replaced by centralised online setups (now that groups like Amazon have carved out the idea into the mainstream), whether or not the initial manufacturer is a multinational or a single craftsman; I don't think we'll ever see the end of the high street perishable stores, ie. food, whether as corner shops selling a bit of everything, or single-purpose shops like grocers, bakers and butchers, or open-air markets (and those who think that such markets are a minority kind of thing selling artisan products to yuppies, haven't been to continental europe much - these markets have been around there for centuries and in quite a few modern cities are the main source of the weekly shopping for the average family).
Mind you, that thought is predicated on the belief that people take their food more personally than almost anything else (hey, if you ingest electronic widgets several times a day, go you; but I'll bet you pay more attention to them than you would to say, curtain rings), and won't stand for their food being turned to crap. The larger fast food chains (and the comedy stereotype of Scottish food) do tend to argue that that may not necessarily be true...
]]>It's neither high-minded nor idealistic (hell, it was articulated by Jeremy Clarkson for pete's sake), but the Range Rover argument is a powerful one.
The idea being that most people don't drive Range Rovers (think SUV if you're from the US) on a school run because they need them or like them; they drive them because in a car-v-rover accident, the rover drives up the bonnet of the car and through the windscreen, killing the driver of the car and leaving the driver of the rover relatively unscathed. People see this, subconciously believe the rover's safer (because just look at the thing, it's a solid block of steel) and buy it because they want their kids to have the highest chance of surviving an accident.
The facts that this isn't how accidents really work, or that the Rover is woefully ill-suited to the task, or that there's a higher long-term cost to the owner and the environment, or that you look like a choose-your-own-expletive-here driving one; are just all outweighed by the thought of some other jerk driving a rover through the windscreen of your car and killing you and your family in an accident. (Once again, human perception of risk proves woefully inadaquate).
That - I strongly suspect - is the same logic behind inheritance. The idea that we're all going to be idealistic in the same way regarding the start our kids get in life is so foreign that noone will believe it, and so long as one person breaks the pact, nobody dares trust in it...
tl;dr - The prisoners dilemma isn't something the general public groks when they think about it.
]]>So we're in the odd position of having chosen one of the best candidates available because of the underhanded tactics of an ex-terrorist party against the corrupt party that ruined our country.
It's a bit of a head-wrecker really.
]]>If you live in Ireland, or if you've watched recent events in Irish politics, you know that that particular desire makes Charlie's look like kindergarden math problems...
]]>It's boring...
]]>Well, it's not exactly like that - the IRS requires you to file forms with them every year, but you might not be actually taxed as a result if living abroad. The problems most of the US people in Canada are currently having with that seems to stem not from back taxes, but from fines for not filing forms.
Which isn't to defend the IRS because frankly, it's one of the most transparent acts of moneygrubbing I've seen outside of Ireland in quite a while!
]]>Erm. I don't actually disagree with the sentiment... ...but either you're wrong about how far we've already progressed in this direction, or Hans Rosling has been lying for five years. And that latter possibility is a desperately depressing one.
Also, "the Other" - I'm not sure I'd agree with the idea that it's the riff-raff, or Johnny Foreigner. Not that those xenophobic tendencies don't exist in our countries (sadly, that's one illusion that gets shattered daily), but because those who hold them... tend to look on the science fiction section of the bookstore as the first place to go to have some fun with petrol and matches.
The "other", for a lot of those of us who read your kind of books, are, I suspect, not defined by skin colour, ethnicity or anything so inert, but by their attitudes and actions. The "Other", for me at least, are the braying mob - the allegorical mob of torch-wielding villagers, whether they're chasing the Monster out of town and burning down the Doctor's lab; or chasing the podiatrist out of Portsmouth to save the children. (And yes, I know, urban legend, but the principle stands).
As to what motivates the Star Trek society (yeuch, but that is what you're talking about...), I suspect we won't ever reach it. There's not much in economic theory that tells you how to run such a society, and if our basic economics breaks down, I suspect things won't be stable for long enough to pause and figure out what to do next.
Hell, there was a report released this week (but written over a decade ago) advising that the US government not pay off its foreign debt, because economists were worried it would crash the global and domestic economies if the debt was paid off. Which to me sounds like our entire economic system is in what pilots refer to as an unrecoverable attitude - ie. pay down your debts and you'll crash the system, don't pay down your debts and you'll crash the system. The basic fundamentals of economics seem to be predicated on the concept that wealth (in whatever form) is unevenly distributed and that the energy in the system comes from the subsequent flow of that wealth from one part of the system to the other. If everyone had the same amount of wealth as everyone else, it'd be the economics version of the heat death of the universe...
]]>Well, bar the "homages" you occasionally see, which can be funny, but generally don't have that same feeling. And it's far stronger with hard science fiction than most other genres. That's not a very academic analysis, I know, and it's deeply personal (though combine a trick memory and a reasonably voracious appetite for reading and you'd probably get a similar experience).
In the same way, I look at improving car assembly line robotics, or adding features to a database, or building a taller building or whatever, and while I know academically that these add to the sum of human knowledge and indirectly are contributing to space exploration; it just doesn't have the same feeling that I get from looking at someone using a robotic arm on the ISS or building an experimental solar sail or talking to the people who drove Pathfinder on Mars.
Then again, the idea of sampling Lake Vostok gives a similar feeling, so perhaps it's not so much "up" as it is "out" - finding new stuff to learn about, seeing what's over the next hill, whether that hill be a geographical feature or a metaphorical obstacle. That's got to be a pretty basic human drive, even if it's not shared by the entire race...
]]>AND, the occasional stuff (ie stuff I follow for short defined periods) such as the #aras11 hashtag (tracking the current Irish presidential election), or the #oiref and #jpref hashtags (tracking the current Irish constitutional referenda); or @Octocon (the Irish science fiction con account)
AND, the news sources (ie sources which are regular but low-traffic, or high-priority event-driven) like @storyful, @apod, @MetEireann, @GardaTraffic, @overdublin, @CSOIreland, @NewEarthquake and so on.
]]>As to the kindle keyboard... I mean, I love me a physical keyboard, haptic feedback and all - it's why I don't like iPhones and iPads - but an eReader isn't an eWriter. I don't need a keyboard. I'm one of those people who was raised to regard scribbling in the margins of a book with the same distaste that you'd reserve for someone urinating in the aisles of the library. So why the heck a good 20% or more of the kindle was taken up with a keyboard you'd almost never use is beyond me. It makes as much sense as a chocolate fireguard.
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