Honestly, I think your right. Games are just one example, but yea people also have more time to dedicate to the obscure intellects. Maybe that answers the underlying question he asks.

It seems to stand to reason that when your not forced by nature to be spending every minute of every day worrying about your survival. Imagine how much work it must have been to hand till or even horse till a field. Regular hunting for food. The hours spend washboarding your clothes, and the difficulty of shopping daily for other food because of the lack of abundant refrigeration. We take it for granted now, but a drive through cheeseburger joint was something mythical 150 years ago. Now instead of worrying about survival, we put efforts into abstracts. We have the luxury of time to dedicate to tv, games, youtube, and other edutainment medias.

I mean even in work our lives have become extremely abstract. I would bet 150 years ago that even something like a resume was only for the elite if even they needed them. The rest of us would have been left with the choice of milk the cows or tend the crops on the family farm. You didn't even have to look for the work, there was plenty enough to do. Take the time back to 300 years (which really isn't that far back in time) and we would seem like aliens and be totally unrelated to people and their daily activities.

Even better attach them to a polygraph and give then a 110volt 30 second shock if they are fibbing. Repeat questions until the truth comes out. Moderator "Mr. President, Last term you said you wanted to close guantanimo for good and that the practice of torture was absolutely beneath american principles. Since you failed in every way to accomplish this and in fact ramped up guantanimo's usage and even hold americans there without any form of due process, are you still planning to close guantanimo in your second term or was that just a plain ole lie?" Obama "I wouldnt call it a lie" ZZZZZAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP (panting) "holy shit that hurt...." "Americans need to realize that closing guantanimo is a difficult and challenging thing to manage" ZZZZZZAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP (panting harder) "I want to close guantanimo but other leaders are standing in my way" ZZZZZZAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP (Panting harder still) "Ok Ok, I only said that because it was a talking point set by the moderators and it made my "hope" message mean something. Honestly, I love torture and seriously want every american tortured even for small marijana offences, I love war and love to boast about being the commander in cheif. I mean seriously if you had the power to detain, murder, rape and pillage all under a shadowy veil where no one could see what your doing, would you give it up?" Ding Ding Ding!

coda is sweet... for mac users... wish there was a port to pc. =(

I think both of you are correct. There is a substantial amount of fear mongering occurring at the same time as the threat to physical infrastructure via virus is certainly plausible as Stuxnet has seemingly proven. There are a great number of facilities that rely upon computers to do major calculations and many of which hold peoples lives in their digital "hands". On the flip side, there is "danger" around EVERY corner. If we consistently put our resources on the table to pre-emptively combat one problem, then, we are unable to sufficiently battle another. The one irony I find is that most of these high level viruses seem to emanate outward from the US and then because we do X we have to defend from Y. Just seems to me like lately we are creating all our own problems. When you are not picking fights it's a lot easier to make friends.

"which is an absolute requirement if we want people to believe we're a REPUBLIC." - FTFY

The situation of democracy being pushed on us is such rediculous BS. None of the founders had a positive view of democracy and for good reason. Now we have teachers, politicians and world leaders saying "be like America.. a true democracy!"... the only problem is we are not one. We are a republic. Democracies are doomed to fail and result in MOB RULE which leads to an oligarchy. I am not sure where or why democracy is making a resurgence, but I for one do not welcome democracy as I know the outcome of such governments. What boggles me even more is our own politicians and leaders continue to reffer to our nation as a democracy. I mean to be elected to office shouldn't you at least know what kind of government we are?

I suggest all people who either don't understand governments to review this short you tube video clearly describing the benefits,problems, and pitfalls of each type of government. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4r0VUybeXY

Just a few of the recent american leaders who like to use "democracy" over "republic" when speaking in public.
Nanci Pelosi - "Our founders established a democracy – not a plutocracy." - Addressing People of the American Way (um Nancy, we are not a democracy and there is no such thing as a plutocracy)
Barrack Obama - "Tonight is answer to those who still question the power of our democracy." - Addressing Nation (sigh, president doesn't even know)
Hillary Clinton - "And after we won our independence, it was activists who helped establish our democracy." - Addressing Convention (cmon, really? They despised democracies...)
Bill Clinton - "...to balance the budget, renew our democracy, and finish the job of welfare reform..." - State of the Union (Apparently the state of the union was not particularly good on this day...)

All in all, i understand why people keep making the mistake as our own leaders don't know what type of government they are a part of. However, please in the future, consider the reality of our nations government type before posting. For fun, ask any non-history (and even some history teachers) what type of government we are and see how our children are being misled daily by teachers who also do not understand the facts. Its really quite a sad state.

hacking.... sure
straight up predetermined winners... sure

Then again, i'm sure its happening already. Link Here. (about 3:10 it shows the hack)

Yea, this whole thing seems rediculous to me. I mean computers are machines and perform a task for a person/person(s). The computers themselves are not persons. Sure, results may vary with usage in a search and of course the programmers are going to manipulate some results in favor of one or another thing but it is the speech of the programmer extended through a computer result.

All in all, I think your post is dead on the money. Especially the poignant, flavorful and accurate comment "entirely ridiculous abuse of language". I laughed out loud reading it. Nicely written and i totally agree.

I am not sure why, but this whole thing reminds me of the corporations are people thing. Though I admit to not understanding it fully, it seems ridiculous and the effects of that being the case is seemingly detrimental besides defying logic. To me is makes a group of people have the ability to sort of exist in an alias. Then when shit hits the fan from their mistakes and bad deeds, they then let the company take the fall and a non entity dies (maybe) but the actual people who are responsible go free. Just makes no sense to me. It also seems like a law that was established to help protect the few cases where it hurt the owners that actually did no wrong, but, has been grossly abused and made into a tool for people to get away with anything they want... Sorry, sidetracked a little, just thought there was some link to the two.

I think you are painting a naive picture. No one doubts that we make war machines here in America. That is a no-brainer. The real problem is the legislation that effectively turns US war machines against it's people and that with conventional war machines, the pilots had the ability to object to an order. Now, in a closed room with high level officials having direct and immediate access to the pilots, the reasonable thought that pilots may object is removed. Whats more, because there is not a specific pilot to blame for an occurrence, one could assume that these pilots would be protected by anonymity. Lastly, these machines are considered secret weapons, so, if one crashed in a suburb, what exactly will be done? Team of military personnel, maybe self destruct, who knows. In my opinion it is a shadow weapon and a the biggest threat to individual sovereignty that we have ever faced. Imagine a day when drones are the size of a small bird and there are thousands of them... you will never be alone again, you will never not be watched, you will never have any semblance of privacy. I love the wonderful things drones could do for humanity, but am certainly very skeptical and fearful of what may actually come of their deployment. Great article on the topic. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/07/where-is-outrage/

i thought exactly the same thing... funny.

now that was worth a good laugh. thanks!

Making an affordable drone is not too tough. If you go to hobby king, there is a drone plan that I helped a friend build for less than 500$. The airframe was like twenty bucks. The motors batteries and speed controller you can adjust based on need but will cost around $200 and the "brain" is another 300 for the ardupilot mega. You can do the brain for less if you dont mind wiring and a little programming. It is fairly large (about 20-30 inches prop to prop) and has pretty strong motors which will move it very fast and can combat the wind well. You would still need rf cameras that can either store locally for playback after words (as cheaply as 20$) or a camera and an rf sending unit (costly but obviously more capable). There are larger and smaller kits and since the ardupilot can manage a plane, standard heli, quad copter, hexacopters and others you are really only need decide what type of flying unit would be best. Quad copters are great in my opinion and a quick you tube search will show how capable they can really be. A really good one is one where a swarm of quads play the theme song of mission impossible. Your challenges will be in battery life (how long you can fly for) vs power (how much wind you can fight) im guessing. But if you make a small powerful one you should be in god shape. I think the one at hobby king is a really good choice of frame. Its balsa construction and goes together in short order. Its strong, light and holds good sized motors. I think it would probably do very well for your needs.

though maybe not as vehemently, i agree there are people with varying levels of intellect. In such an instance as this we are dealing with politics and policing. Both cost money and manpower. Whether we expend vast resources or not, the people with low intellect are likely to stay there not for any other reason than they were born unfortunately. I wish the world were different but as you note, some people aint so bright and will likely reject all things which would elevate themselves from their plight but simply lack the resources (mentally, physically, monetarily, or others). Like the whale in the hitchikers guide... sometimes u just get the shaft. So what do the oversights and stipulations successfully accomplish? They are not going to make people more awake. Really the only people who benefit are the wise who will use the information. But wouldnt the wise already be attending to themselves to keep themselves alive and prosperous? Instead we force people to pay taxes for something which will not help the target audience in any appreciable way, will cost dearly to the people who work hard and are already wise enough to avoid obvious pitfalls and removes choice... especially if fanatically sought after. ie: school lunch mandates. If people really demaded that food be labeled properly, then they should do so with their dollars at the local level. then they would get the facts that would really matter. Look at health food. Lately the surge is in the healthy eating and look organic is doing well, small farms are appearing in cities, food stores are going organic, etc. That is the free market working and doing so AROUND legislation. The people demanded it with their dollars and got what they wanted! The same is true throughout so many successful industries. You know how a restaurant with a bad rep is basically done for if you worked in the industry... the people govern what stays and goes in a very natural way. The real problem in my opinion is that the big companies get so strong that they force legislation with donations and influence to allow them to pass laws that limit competition via higher cost of doing business. That is when it gets scary and we past that point a long time ago.

to small businesses and little restaurants, this type of regulation would be exceedingly hard to enforce, expensive to the consumer, expensive to the restaurant, and once again puts the govt in charge of your well being.... I personally don't pick up a bacon cheese burger and think "now that looks healthy and nutritios" or a salad and think "god this has to be bad for you". I honestly don't think anyone is that stupid. Besides, a coke is about 230 calories... so is a large salad with some nice carrots, onions, and other veggies with a little chicken. Which is better for you? The information still relies on an alert consumer with enough intelligence to know whats good and bad for them unless you detail every fact, every piece of data on every ingredient etc and you read understand un digest all of it. The left unfortunately seems to think they need to protect people from themselves.... they do not.

well said.

Read about carbon taxes/credits, then you tube it. Take a good look at how politicians use "science" and misinformation to push a political agenda that lines their pockets, creates MORE pollution and gives companies in on the scheme a "green" seal of approval. Unfortunately greed has infiltrated both sides of politics and "science" (if you can even call it that) is used as "definitive proof" by paid off scientists to push an agenda. Personally I am skeptic of just about all science used in politics these days. Like the internet, you can find your "proof" by simply asking for it... The questions i think all people should ask in every case of science is "who made this report and why did they make it?". Where did they get their grants and who are their supporters.... follow the money trail (when you can).