posted
There's also the whole thing about millennial being, you know, still pretty young. I think the whole conversation about the work-ethic of millennial is premature.
But, um, yeah. I thought immediately of this thread when I read OSC's review of a year-old article on cracked expressing his agreement with said article and warning his audience about the language.
Posts: 196 | Registered: Jun 2009
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quote: I think the whole conversation about the work-ethic of millennial is premature
Maybe. As generations go, the real question is whether we want to call "much more heavily exploited" or "much more exploitable due to circumstances and/or mentalities about work" something akin to having a 'work ethic.' Because people in my age group are, when you look at the data, being squeezed in a way which generates more labor but keeps wealth out of our hands. Jobs lost in the last crash come back as part-time low-wage options, barely paid or unpaid internships, etc.
And, well, apparently we're doing them! And working longer hours. I guess that's either a work ethic, if not exploitability due to controlled labor conditions.
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posted
I've wondered if the circumstances Sam is talking about will lead to a mainstream re-embrace of socialism down the road a little bit.
Posts: 1087 | Registered: Jul 1999
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We didn't show up late and get the crumbs. We showed up late, and were handed the bill, and told to do dishes to pay back the bill at the rate of $7.00 an hour while the bill accrues interest of $8.00 per hour.
But hey, we should just roll up our sleeves and stop whining.
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: I've wondered if the circumstances Sam is talking about will lead to a mainstream re-embrace of socialism down the road a little bit.
I certainly think this is true. And have said so quite a few times.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
well the millenials have already 'embraced socialism' by most ways you can envision the phrase's meaning and intent.
when you get to actually see and live how much actually 'trickles down' when the free market has the wherewithal to act primarily in its own interests, when you get to live in a jobless recovery, when the economic reality around you is that the rising tide raises all yachts (and it's such a darn shame you didn't have one)
well let's just say you're not very likely to be a freemarketeer. millenials are actually so frightfully and profoundly liberal that the "mainstream re-embrace of socialism" is .. I wouldn't say 'totally guaranteed' but rather that nobody has come up with a remotely likely scenario unfolding, short of a massive unprecedented national crisis, that doesn't inevitably result in it.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I mean, for what it's worth, most of my friends and I are all in our early twenties. Some are working 50 hours a week between their two/three part-time jobs, and I'm in the opposite extreme, working 24 hours a week with my one part-time job. (Doing music gigs on the side)
In any case, when you've been working 50 hours a week for several years and haven't had a day off in 200 days, it's kind of hard to read the news closely enough to distinguish between actual Socialism and what people on the right have been saying "Socialism" is. If "Socialism" means I can feed my kids and have healthcare, then sure. Socialism sounds great. Let's do it! What are "means of production?"
For my truly socialist friends, this works out pretty well for them. There's no stigma anymore in saying they're socialist, because nobody knows what it means. Lets them lay out the agenda without as much negative bias.
Posts: 196 | Registered: Jun 2009
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posted
Get out there and vote wouldja? All you almost Socialists. Not just for national elections either. Often those are swayed by the local folks in office. You know. The ones in charge of gerrymandering and voting hours.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
OSC complained about physics inaccuracies in the film Gravity - and yeah, I have no argument. There are some big ones (like the idea that you can aim directly at an object in a trailing orbit and just launch directly for it and travel in a straight inertial line - see Niven's Integral Trees for a more accurate treatment of the physics) and plenty of small ones.
But one of his complaints is that the re-entry vehicle would tumble and burn up if it didn't hit the atmosphere at the right attitude.
quote:Only all of a sudden, another bit of magic! Without fuel, without rockets, the capsule conveniently stops tumbling, rights itself, and enters the atmosphere with the heat-shields downward, after all.
This part didn't seem implausible to me. I figured the craft would be designed so that the correct orientation is the one with the least drag - so the initial drag forces would help it settle into the correct orientation.
Anybody know?
Oh yeah, forgot the big one: stuff traveling in a super fast version of the same orbit lapping you repeatedly. Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
yeah gravity plays it extremely fast and loose with that there physics thing. It was using a number of flubs and make believey fudge physics to make the scenario and plot work. For things like being able to take a spacewalk from station to station.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
SpaceShipOne (the X prize winner) had a "feathering" system that allowed it to reenter without the need of maneuvering rockets for stability. However that was a sub-orbital craft traveling at much lower speeds. Tumbling on reentry is a MAJOR problem for spacecraft.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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posted
Honestly, as someone who works with communication satellites on a regular basis, the biggest and most obvious problem with the movie is the idea that all of Earth's communication satellites got destroyed, and that they're on the same plane and orbit as the ISS.
Almost all communication satellites (including TV) are in geostationary orbit at 22,236 miles. The ISS orbits at 236 miles. This present several problems...
A) Communication satellites, even those in the same longitude (like G-23 and ES-9 at 121 W) are still hundreds, if not thousands of miles apart from each other. The chances of debris from one hitting another, or of them colliding, is so small it's more or less statistically impossible.
B) Said satellites orbit once every 24 hours. Anything that would cause them to start moving faster would also increase the size of their orbit, therefore moving them out of the Clark Belt, or out of Earth orbit entirely. So again, there's no way they could collide.
C) The amount of force necessary to accelerate/decelerate a satellite quickly enough to literally destroy *every* satellite in orbit in a few minutes would also cause an explosion large enough to cause some serious problems for those of us here on Earth.
So the entire premise is pretty ridiculous and impossible. Which is pretty much what you can expect from Hollywood. Didn't keep me from enjoying it immensely, though.
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posted
In his defense, I know people who returned brand new computers when they found out it wasn't worth it to install Windows 7 on those machines. But IIRC this was Fall 12.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I'm pretty sure that's Sam's joke. My understanding is the joke goes like this: he was going to mock OSC for not understanding Windows 8 and then he tried to use Win8 and was confused by its awful interface and ended up just as confused as the "old man" and ... Yeah. That's the joke. OSC isn't alone in his confusion and frustration.
There are some nifty 3rd party add-ons that cosmetically restore windows 7 and keep the disgusting touchscreen Metro crap out of your way. If OSC sticks with Win8 someone who knows him should clue him in. iObit's Start 8 is the free one, there are a few low cost paid versions too.
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posted
Windows 8 takes roughly 10 minutes to learn to use, and then all of the frustrations OSC mentioned become very minor. His ire is a bit outsized.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Yeah, I think it was a mistake to try to unify the PC experience with the tablet/phone experience. I see what they were going for, and I didn't know the ways in which I'd dislike it before I tried it, but it seems pretty clear that people don't want or need these things to be unified, and in fact probably the continued vitality of the PC niche corresponds to ways in which it works better for some tasks than other devices can, so, like, don't make that harder.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I think it would be great if I had a touchscreen or a tablet device to use to interface with it. There's a 5$ add on from Stardock that's really good and works well with multiple screens.
quote:Yeah, I think it was a mistake to try to unify the PC experience with the tablet/phone experience.
I don't think they had any choice. They may not have done a good job of it, but I don't think there's any doubt that Apple and even Google are hoping for a unified OS experience across all of their devices and it's actually kind of amazing that it was Microsoft that moved first on this.
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They may have thought they had no choice, but honestly committing to it in the way they did was horrid and, if anything, gave the competitors leeway to sit back, relax, and slowly integrate a unified experience.
That doesn't do what win 8 did.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Yeah, I think it was a mistake to try to unify the PC experience with the tablet/phone experience.
I don't think they had any choice. They may not have done a good job of it, but I don't think there's any doubt that Apple and even Google are hoping for a unified OS experience across all of their devices and it's actually kind of amazing that it was Microsoft that moved first on this.
Fair point. I think it depends on what you mean by "unified". If it means that my keyboard and mouse are less convenient to use than they used to be, it's probably the wrong implementation, for now.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Yeah what "unified" means here is a big question mark. Apple has a lot of consistency: in look, apps, and functionality when appropriate. You could call it "unified" in many respects.
But iOS and OS X are still fundamentally different environments and I don't know that Apple intends on ever changing that. Small touch devices are sufficiently different than computers with mice and keyboards that I'm scratching my head as to why you'd want to give up the advantages of either. Make each OS play to be strengths of the medium.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Yeah what "unified" means here is a big question mark. Apple has a lot of consistency: in look, apps, and functionality when appropriate. You could call it "unified" in many respects.
But iOS and OS X are still fundamentally different environments and I don't know that Apple intends on ever changing that. Small touch devices are sufficiently different than computers with mice and keyboards that I'm scratching my head as to why you'd want to give up the advantages of either. Make each OS play to the strengths of the medium.
posted
Apple was playing with the idea of one OS to run them all a while back, but abandoned the idea. MS ran with it and came up with an OS that has some fantastic advancements, but failed to pay listen to people like me who repeatedly told them that the Metro interface just doesn't work with a desktop.
They were essentially betting on the emergence of touch capable devices in larger formats (desktop monitors, laptops, etc) to take advantage of the OS. This did not occur, in great part because the complexity of work that *has* to be done on a workstation or laptop does not easily lend itself to a touch based experience. If MS hadn't chosen to force Metro UI on the non-touch device sphere, it would have received a much better reception.
Once I installed Start8 on my computer at home, Windows 8 was just as effective and in some ways better than 7, but for some reason it didn't like my video card and I my game framerates dropped by about 75%, so I had to go back to 7 on my desktop. I still use 8 on my HTPC, though.
All that said, there are some really neat features in Windows 8 that are really useful for enterprise environments and small businesses, particularly in the realm of virtualization. Unfortunately, the screwed up user experience makes it unattractive to anyone who would want to use those features.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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If I *had* a touch-capable laptop or desktop monitor, I'd probably want to have Windows 8 running on it just to be able to take advantage of Metro once in a while. But I don't own my own laptop, and I like my ~6 year old monitor better than any consumer grade (i.e. affordable) monitors I can find these days.
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For what it's worth I find the quoting style in that article insufferable, but overall it was still worth reading.
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I'm pretty entertained by the fact that it's inconceivable to Card that his tastes aren't universal, and that people must be eating Greek yogurt because they've willingly developed a taste for "nasty food" because of its healthiness.
He's just gotten absurdly inflexible in his thinking. If subsections of his essays had titles, that one would be called "Creon in the Dairy Aisle".
Posts: 1087 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
What always makes me cringe is his arrogance in thinking himself the definitive arbiter of "correctness" in pretty much every field.
Thinking himself more knowledgeable about Churchill than the person who wrote the autobiography he just read, would be one such instance.
I mean sure, maybe Card is the one who is correct about whatever details he is referencing in that section. But to flatly state that the author is "quite wrong", without saying which details are in question or what sources contradict them, is a level of arrogance that is pretty foreign to me.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: What always makes me cringe is his arrogance in thinking himself the definitive arbiter of "correctness" in pretty much every field.
Thinking himself more knowledgeable about Churchill than the person who wrote the autobiography he just read, would be one such instance.
I mean sure, maybe Card is the one who is correct about whatever details he is referencing in that section. But to flatly state that the author is "quite wrong", without saying which details are in question or what sources contradict them, is a level of arrogance that is pretty foreign to me.
For quite awhile, I noticed many of the same things and chalked it up to blends of affectation for the sake of a column, ordinary but strong conviction on a given topic, along with an ordinary human general failure to ask 'what if I'm wrong?'
My impression has changed over the years. I'm really no in a good position to say how much of that is due to my greater exposure to his politics, particularly on social issues such as gay rights, and the very strong antagonism his methods and ideas arouse in me.
I'm sure that's some of it, but I don't think it's all or even most of it. It would be one thing if he felt passionately. So do I. But he is perfectly comfortable, it seems, to speak about incredibly complicated and controversial issues-such as what is meant by family, the intricacies of foreign policy-as though it were settled. As though he's got a straight line on the obvious truth, and detractors are generally some form of deviant whether it's in that they hate America, hate the religious, or hate families. I don't for example see him now writing another Ender's Game, or a Treason, or especially a Hart's Hope or a Songmaster. One of the many things that made those stories so powerful to me as that everyone, best to worst, was human. All grappled with uncertainty, whether the were good or bad. And there wasn't any what felt like transparent authorial preaching. That's been lost, and I notice it most in his fiction but more often in his columns and politics.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: I'm pretty entertained by the fact that it's inconceivable to Card that his tastes aren't universal, and that people must be eating Greek yogurt because they've willingly developed a taste for "nasty food" because of its healthiness.
He's just gotten absurdly inflexible in his thinking. If subsections of his essays had titles, that one would be called "Creon in the Dairy Aisle".
I've heard him say multiple times that he understands taste is subjective, and that his views are flawed, but that doesn't stop him from speaking about tastes in the way he does.
I feel like that statement you've quoted is obviously said tongue in cheek. It's over the top, but part of him still believes it.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
"What always makes me cringe is his arrogance in thinking himself the definitive arbiter of "correctness" in pretty much every field."
To me, that's the hallmark of the debating style here at Hatrack. I've come to expect that everyone knows more than the "experts" here, regardless of the topic. Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: I'm pretty entertained by the fact that it's inconceivable to Card that his tastes aren't universal, and that people must be eating Greek yogurt because they've willingly developed a taste for "nasty food" because of its healthiness.
He's just gotten absurdly inflexible in his thinking. If subsections of his essays had titles, that one would be called "Creon in the Dairy Aisle".
I've heard him say multiple times that he understands taste is subjective, and that his views are flawed, but that doesn't stop him from speaking about tastes in the way he does.
I feel like that statement you've quoted is obviously said tongue in cheek. It's over the top, but part of him still believes it.
I think that if asked he'd readily admit that physical taste is subjective, but I think (to the degree that it's possible to actually know anything about him based on his essays) that he genuinely believes that the movement toward Greek yogurt is health-driven, and the reason that he thinks that is because he has trouble believing that lots of other people genuinely like the taste of something that he dislikes.
quote:I'm so mad
mad about yogurt
That made me laugh.
Posts: 1087 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
Greek yogurt is pretty terrible. Not the taste, but the environmental impact with all the waste product generated from its creation. I'd be rather shocked if OSC brought that up though.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Note to J.K. Rowling: The Harry Potter books are finished. Done. Published. If you wrote something then which you now, as a more mature writer, would probably do differently, so what? You did the best job you knew how to do at the time you wrote the story. Now move on. Your post-publication re-thinks are wasting everybody's time.
Only the first draft is real; your "revisions" in the news media have all, without exception, been pretty stupid, because they completely violate the integrity of what emerged from that first creative fire.
Trust your younger self. Let the older self write the stories that are on fire in your heart today. If there aren't any, then at least have the good taste not to attack the stories that made you rich because people loved them as they were. Not everything you think of is worth saying in public.
Apparently he's still upset that Dumbledore's gay.
After the big stink about Ron/Hermione, the full interview was published, and was a lot more nuanced the what the media reported.
In neither case did J.K. Rowling make a press release saying "Dumbledore's Gay" or "Ron and Hermione should never have married." A fan asked her if Dumbledore had ever married, and the woman who PLAYED HERMIONE IN THE MOVIES asked her if she thought any differently about the character when looking back, as part of an interview about a new HP-related movie project.
Should she just not answer? Should we ban people from asking JKR questions about the books and her relationship to them? Or stop web editors who know that sharing these things might get you to click on a webpage? There's a reason her most recent book was written by "Robert Galbraith."
Anyway, this all reminded me of 1. the afterword of Fahrenheit 451, written decades later, where Ray Bradbury admits he would have changed many things, while simultaneously being outraged that people who were not him shared things that bothered them about the book. I disagreed with Bradbury's fantasy changes, but that didn't mean I didn't find reading about them interesting. Also, 2.OSC has certainly written over details from the Ender series with recent sequels.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
In the column he explains that by stating he is correcting factual inconsistencies. Also, if she wants to reveal more details about the characters, then write that stuff and publish it.
As for J.K. Rowling, perhaps Mr. Card does not know the full context of those two statements. But even then, yes you can answer them. But she'd be better served stating, "I had considered writing them like this, but..."
Personally I got the vibe that Dumbledore was gay, but I still felt if it was not worth mentioning in the book, then the author must not have felt very strongly about that aspect of the character.
Mainly Harry Potter sucks because the protagonist is not an American, nor are there any American wizards. We all know if anybody is going to save any wizarding world it's going to be those scrappy Americans with their plucky, no nonsense, can-do attitudes! With perhaps some gumption thrown in for good measure.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz: Note to J.K. Rowling: The Harry Potter books are finished. Done. Published. If you wrote something then which you now, as a more mature writer, would probably do differently, so what? You did the best job you knew how to do at the time you wrote the story. Now move on. Your post-publication re-thinks are wasting everybody's time.
Only the first draft is real; your "revisions" in the news media have all, without exception, been pretty stupid, because they completely violate the integrity of what emerged from that first creative fire.
Trust your younger self. Let the older self write the stories that are on fire in your heart today. If there aren't any, then at least have the good taste not to attack the stories that made you rich because people loved them as they were. Not everything you think of is worth saying in public.
The jaw dropping, horrifying, stupifying irony of that, when I read it, made me gasp with the shock of it.
quote: Anyway, this all reminded me of 1. the afterword of Fahrenheit 451, written decades later, where Ray Bradbury admits he would have changed many things, while simultaneously being outraged that people who were not him shared things that bothered them about the book. I disagreed with Bradbury's fantasy changes, but that didn't mean I didn't find reading about them interesting. Also, 2.OSC has certainly written over details from the Ender series with recent sequels.
It has been 15 years since I read that afterword, but as I recall, it is an ironic, and somewhat angry, reply not only to critics but also to censors who had apparently "YA'd" his book and removed "offending," language. The bit about the Captain burning the pages of a book one at a time, for example, and declaring: "I don't read them!"
Also, he was more upset with the profound stupidness of the criticism- along the lines of people writing him letters to inform him that faber and montag are paper and pencil companies, stating: "and they didn't tell me!"
Also, yes, OSC has, multiple times, revised the text of Ender's Game, making changes I strongly disagree with. And I don't think that is his right, particularly given that the book has passed into place in literature from which it will be accessed by generations to come. He has no right to co-opt that success now by making changes.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
question: did OSC's spontaneous about-face to being a weird ass to JK rowling correspond essentially perfectly with her revealing that dumbledore was gay?
these are questions i must ask from my bathtub full of greek yogurt.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Seriously though what EG details were glossed over that were actually fairly big? I know some contradictions were caught early in the proof reading process and fixed; the only thing I can remember now is how the size of the Jeesh went from like 30 to 9.
Posts: 12931 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
There was the changing of "poltically incorrect" language that I found objectionable (the changes), for reasons here much discussed.
Then he apparently completely rewrote the last couple of chapters to fit with later books, and some other stuff. He just plain forgot where Ender lived when he was recruited, but I don't know that they fixed that.
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