Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 5,087 - 5,098 of 6,170
Bread and circuses!
Minus the bread!
There's plenty of bread. It all belongs to Rupert Murdock though.
Posts 5,087 - 5,098 of 6,170
Minus the bread!
There's plenty of bread. It all belongs to Rupert Murdock though.
I almost never watch news on tv. It's more about getting viewers than about actually reporting anything, government-sanctioned or not. Also, I find that by getting news on the internet I tend to be about a month (or more) ahead of the MSM (that's main-stream-media). Plus I can easily look up more info if a story interests me.
Interesting posts...and points of view. God knows we need more people out there that take an interest. News used to be news MOST of the time. We've always had some political slant but never to the extent it is today - in either direction. It's really all about the bread now - bravo! You said it. The pathetic thing is that the hard work of the artists and journalists is lost whenever the money talks instead of the news. Professor Klato suggests that BOTS RULE and should take over the news function - sort of like the Vitaphone Company did for the movies during the Spanish American War - except the bots could manufacture the news so it's all GOOD news. I was just a kid then in 1898. I've listened to a whole bunch of your bots - very professional. Don't you think they can manufacture the news better, spontaneously, and so we don't have to wait until 6 PM? And we don't have to listen to the same stale news over and over because they could revise it on demand. I think they would do an excellent job.
A correction to the above. Professor Klato says that it was Stuart Blackmon et al that created a movie for an event during the S-A War. They were not there, of course. Blackmon became president of Vitaphone. Every film that is made with special effects still carries (I believe) the Vitaphone Seal. I love manufactured news. It's so entertaining. [Note: if any more errors are found, please refer them to Professor Klato, who has now mastered 3 words and spoken to his first botmaster (besides me). I believe the word was "hello". I will relish the day when he can say meaningfully the words "obscene" and "vulgar".]
I try to avoid overdoing TV these days, sticking only to those shows that I like that have a sense of ongoing storyline, leaving behind the reset switch episodic types (CSI comes to mind even if it is a very watchable show). I do think there is serious dumbing down going on in some of them. For instance I do like Numb3rs. I think it has some really good characters for a story driven show. But I often find that they dumb down the mathematical concepts used to the point of irrelevance, and often what is revealed through the data processing (usually a mathematically likely suspect) is the sort of thing that common sense and a little detective work could just have easily provided you.
As for news, what I hate the most is the way the adjective more and more readily finds its way into a news report, which is supposed to be objective facts (don't get me started on the live-cross speculation-as-news thing). Once it was just a shooting. Then it became a brutal or senseless shooting. No one really objected, because perhaps in some instances very few people would have disagreed that the crime wasn't "brutal" or "senseless". Then it started to creep into everything. You count how many emotionally-loaded words you'll find in your average article or TV news bit, and you tell me that we're not being positioned to a particular point of view or response?
/end rant
As for news, what I hate the most is the way the adjective more and more readily finds its way into a news report, which is supposed to be objective facts (don't get me started on the live-cross speculation-as-news thing). Once it was just a shooting. Then it became a brutal or senseless shooting. No one really objected, because perhaps in some instances very few people would have disagreed that the crime wasn't "brutal" or "senseless". Then it started to creep into everything. You count how many emotionally-loaded words you'll find in your average article or TV news bit, and you tell me that we're not being positioned to a particular point of view or response?
/end rant
i hate watching the news becase it seems like all news is bad and theres never anything good.
I do like some reality tv shows, I do like wife swap and how clean is your house, because they seem more real, but i hate big brother, its such a waste of time!
I do like some reality tv shows, I do like wife swap and how clean is your house, because they seem more real, but i hate big brother, its such a waste of time!
LM1 I guess we have some of the same voyeuristic tastes but I don't get How Clean is Your House at home. I don't have cable, so that must be the problem. Something in me thinks I would dislike that show because in my case the answer is "Not very. Take a number and I'll get to your concern in the order of it's importance to me."
Corwin, You are right about the math in Numb3rs, though I thought some of the explanations are good. It may be one of those things where the less you know about the subject, the better you like the way of handling it. I always hate when people on shows such as Law and Order quote rules of civil procedure in criminal court. On a very superficial level (and knowing I sound like every jerk who says "We didn't have teachers who looked like you when I was in school."), not only do I find the characters on Numb3rs interesting, I also believe that if I had had a math professor who looked like Charlie when I was in university, my undergraduate degree would not be in psychology.
Yep, even in "good" shows sex appeal sells. I guess the difference is that in good shows there is also a plot, characterization and an intellectual challenge. The hotness factor is just icing. When the look of the actor/ actress (and the state of undress) is the entire show, then it's annoying (or in some countries it's the news--same difference really).
Corwin, You are right about the math in Numb3rs, though I thought some of the explanations are good. It may be one of those things where the less you know about the subject, the better you like the way of handling it. I always hate when people on shows such as Law and Order quote rules of civil procedure in criminal court. On a very superficial level (and knowing I sound like every jerk who says "We didn't have teachers who looked like you when I was in school."), not only do I find the characters on Numb3rs interesting, I also believe that if I had had a math professor who looked like Charlie when I was in university, my undergraduate degree would not be in psychology.
Yep, even in "good" shows sex appeal sells. I guess the difference is that in good shows there is also a plot, characterization and an intellectual challenge. The hotness factor is just icing. When the look of the actor/ actress (and the state of undress) is the entire show, then it's annoying (or in some countries it's the news--same difference really).
The 'sex sells' is definitely hitting the news in Canada. The Sun news paper has the 'sunshine girl' on the front page now. You never see a news reporter or weatherperson that hasn't got their teeth capped and a perfect nose. Is this all our fault for buying it!?
Okay. Okay. Sex is relevant. Sex sells. Sex is news.
One very large famous university used to run TV ads between the 900 phone sex ads early in the morning and increased their enrollment by over 25%. I taught there for many years waiting for my first 900 phone call. When I went to church, people would glare at me.
With the advent of Naked News in Canada and Naked Truth in Moscow, we seem to expect more and more of it. The formula seems to work in cycles. Talking about TV and the Movies, one study says there hasn't been a new idea in Hollywood in the last ten years, which means sex will again be used to sell their products. They keep packaging and re-packaging the same Hero's Journey and dressing it up with whatever is needed to sell.
Now to the main point of why we're here. Those of you who either subscribe to or know of Second Life, you know one of the hot items for bots is to create walking, talking avatars. It's here already. There are companies offering the service. Any of you who are interested, I would like to hear from you. I do have a basic model for controlling it but it is still untested. It may not ever pan out, understand that. My students are going to be working on this model in their spare time. The AIScript will work as the language engine, at least from a preliminary assessment. I am more familiar with AIML, LISP, and PYTHON. The actual control isn't very hard but it's not trivial. I think Personality Forge is the perfect place to be now.
And oh, yes, my neighbor in Second Life runs a lap dance service. Sex is a big seller there. Ask my avatar.
And Bev, I beg to differ with you on that nerdy mathematician from Numbe3s (also Santa Clause, and 10 Things I Hate About You). It don't work quite like that. I have taught thousands of young ladies in my lifetime and they still majored in psychology, journalism, gen-ed, etc. Go figure. And I was kidding about the Numbe3s guy. He's a dude.
One very large famous university used to run TV ads between the 900 phone sex ads early in the morning and increased their enrollment by over 25%. I taught there for many years waiting for my first 900 phone call. When I went to church, people would glare at me.
With the advent of Naked News in Canada and Naked Truth in Moscow, we seem to expect more and more of it. The formula seems to work in cycles. Talking about TV and the Movies, one study says there hasn't been a new idea in Hollywood in the last ten years, which means sex will again be used to sell their products. They keep packaging and re-packaging the same Hero's Journey and dressing it up with whatever is needed to sell.
Now to the main point of why we're here. Those of you who either subscribe to or know of Second Life, you know one of the hot items for bots is to create walking, talking avatars. It's here already. There are companies offering the service. Any of you who are interested, I would like to hear from you. I do have a basic model for controlling it but it is still untested. It may not ever pan out, understand that. My students are going to be working on this model in their spare time. The AIScript will work as the language engine, at least from a preliminary assessment. I am more familiar with AIML, LISP, and PYTHON. The actual control isn't very hard but it's not trivial. I think Personality Forge is the perfect place to be now.
And oh, yes, my neighbor in Second Life runs a lap dance service. Sex is a big seller there. Ask my avatar.
And Bev, I beg to differ with you on that nerdy mathematician from Numbe3s (also Santa Clause, and 10 Things I Hate About You). It don't work quite like that. I have taught thousands of young ladies in my lifetime and they still majored in psychology, journalism, gen-ed, etc. Go figure. And I was kidding about the Numbe3s guy. He's a dude.
It's not just the social control and inane content I object to, nor even the proven damage done by violent<-2>1<0> or sexually explicit<-2>2<0> program content. It's not just about relentlessly dumbed down mind candy that merely wastes well over a quarter of an average viewer's waking life<-2>3<0> (though that would be bad enough!) - it is a pernicious evil that actively damages mind and body.
The very nature of the programming, with constant sensory over-stimulation, enhanced by rapid camera cutting and perspective changes is inherently harmful physiologically<-2>4<0>. They teach the optimisation of such attention-grabbing and holding techniques in "Media Studies" - to my mind that's about as socially responsible a discipline as offering a degree program in suicide bombing.
Our minds are subjected to a constant flickering of light and motion, contextually edited to provide a hypnotic stream of sensations specifically designed to constantly stimulate our awareness without engaging our intellect, because this is what sells - even in "serious" programming about less than typically trivial subjects. It's as simple as that - it is profitable to sell addicts the stuff they crave, and the pusher doesn't care about the consequences. Cut out all the dull or complicated bits that might make us have to think too hard, polish it up with a high aspirational lustre and mix in some glitzy cgi FX, and regurgitate a stream of edited mind-bites at a high enough frequency to prevent boredom and deter channel hopping or recourse to the OFF switch.
And so we no longer have to do anything - we can just watch. Watch other people's tightly scripted, action-packed lives, instead of going to the effort of living a less constantly exciting or apparently fulfilling one of our own. Wish we were as funny/smart/rich/talented/popular/sophisticated as a character played by some dysfunctional actor whose real life, if we but knew it, is almost certainly far more inadequate than our own could ever be. We willingly accept the most absurd aspirations the media offer us, that can never be realized, and can only make us feel like failures when we inevitably don't win the lottery, earn enough to buy a Lear jet, live in a beachfront apartment in Malibu, or wake up one morning to find ourselves married to [insert actor/actress of your dreams]. We kid ourselves that we are educating ourselves and improving our minds - learning and growing, when in fact all we're doing is stunting our potential with this compulsive self abuse.
We didn't spend millions of years evolving psychologically to be able to live like this, any more than we evolved to live on massive overdoses of sugary, fatty, salty, fizzy garbage in our diet. We need some excitement and stimulation, but only in appropriate doses, and not at the expense of substituting the vicarious for the active - by contracting out the living of our lives to the illusional personalities of our choice, we have become like the rats in Robert Heath's experiment<-2>5<0><0>, obsessively seeking momentary pleasure by pressing the switch that's wired to the brain's pleasure centre, with no regard for the harm we do ourselves. I think there probably is a "safe dose" out there somewhere, but it's a LOT lower than the media manipulators would admit or the viewers will choose. It's hard enough to tackle the pervasive damage caused by junk food, tobacco and alcohol in the face of vested economic interests, but the market for media dwarfs even those multi-billion dollar rackets. It is the meta-scam that all other exploitative aspiration-mongering relies on through direct advertising, indirect product placement and subliminal opinioneering.
There is compelling evidence of direct causation of childhood obesity<-2>6<0><0>, and premature puberty and ongoing serious physical and mental damage throughout all stages of life<-2>7<0><0>. And no one has any clear idea of what might constitute a "safe dose" for any particular age group, or even if there is one. But nobody does anything about it. Except to aspire to an even bigger/flatter/brighter HDTV, and more leisure time to spend gazing vacantly back at it, raptly recepetive to its malevolent outpourings.
An average child spends more time watching TV than attending school<-2>8<0><0>.
Frankly, the fact that "by the age of 6, the average British child has spent one complete year in front of a screen, mostly the TV"<-2>6<0><0> indicates to me nothing short of child abuse (I would urge anyone with children to visit http://www.tvturnoff.org/)
I sometimes think I ought to accept that the problem is in me, not in the world - I must be mad, because the only alternative is that the rest of the world has gone entirely mad, and I'm the only sane person left. Everyone I know in RL - my family, my friends, my neighbours - are completely addicted to watching TV all evening, every evening. It's all they do. Most of the ones who don't have to go out to work watch it for much of the day too. And when they can't watch it, they talk about it. It doesn't matter what's actually on - anything will do. Perhaps it's worse than average here in Swansea, but I have seen little evidence it's much better elsewhere.
It's like waking up one day to find you live in Crack World! Everyone's sucking on that pipe - night and day, they've gotta get their fix! I started choking on that filth a long time ago, but it's absurdly difficult to give it up when all around you are making such a concerted effort to destroy their lives with it. Because, like any addicts, they'll use any leverage they can to get you back in the fold and sucking on that crack pipe if you threaten their wellbeing by rejecting their mind-rotting lifestyle choice.
You walk into any pub in town, there's a TV showing constant Sky Sport from opening time to closing time. Our local veterinary surgery, our dentist, the local hospital even, all have TVs in the waiting rooms, permanently tuned to (usually) Sky News. It's ubiquitous inanity. They don't even stay fixed in buildings - you can't seem to travel anywhere without having the idiots lantern inflicted on you. The coach I take to visit my parents has overhead TVs onboard - unavoidably visible from every seat on the bus, though mercifully the free earphones aren't yet compulsory (but why are they always showing a video of the same Simpsons episode [Homer's pet lobster,] the same episode of Friends [2 bimbos have an argument and an airheaded male makes the peace,] the same advertisements for overpriced London "attractions"?) You can't get on a plane these days without a bloody screen grinning at you out of the back of the seat in front! And you can buy TVs to hang on the back of car seats to keep the kids sedated on the shortest of journeys. And we wonder where Attention Deficit Disorder came from?????
In rejecting television I have been accused of a "psychotic" over-reaction, even of "domestic abuse", I have been told that television is "therapeutic", and that I'm being "selfish" for refusing to participate in this wanton self harm, or "a bully" for daring to suggest that I don't want to have a documentary about genocide and mass graves in Bosnia inflicted on me while I eat my dinner (it would of course be unreasonableness personified to suggest it might ever be turned off.) But I have had enough - there will be no more attempts at entirely one-sided compromise for the sake of convenience or harmony. I might just start a self-help group - Tellyholics Anonymous. I guess I can't be the only person in the world who finds it absurdly difficult to actually get free of the malignant influence of this monstrous box.
Or I might have to run away from home and join a monastery with Brother Jerome, or a commune in the woods, before the British Brainwashing Corporation declares me a deviant and has me locked up for subversive and willful non-addiction.
So all I can say is thank God for the Personality Forge! This site is the only place I have found where there are people who actually aspire to do more with their lives than follow in the worn-out footsteps of some media-generated, cardboard-cutout role model - something genuinely creative. I really think I'd have given up the will to live over the last couple of years without it. There might be a few other oases of sanity out there, but they're very few and far between.
1. see <-1>http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p011070.html<0>
2. see <-1>http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3626/is_200310/ai_n9248767<0>
3. <-1>"The average American watches 4 hours and 35 minutes of television each day" http://www.tvturnoff.org/FACT%20SHEETS%202%20PAGER%202007.pdf
4. http://www.benji.com/RisksOfTV.htm
5. http://www.wireheading.com/pleasure.html
6. <-1>"Results indicated that the amount of TV viewed was significantly related to the prevalence of obesity, and the authors concluded that a causal relationship existed between TV viewing and obesity in children and adolescents"http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0841/is_n1_v30/ai_16680971/pg_5<0>
7. <-1>"And the average adult will have spent 12 solid years in front of the box by the time he or she reaches 75.
Dr Sigman has found evidence that too much TV watching causes short-sightedness and disrupts hormonal balance and leads to increased risk of cancer and premature puberty. It also slows down the metabolism which is linked to increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Mental problems linked to too much TV viewing include autism, poor concentration and Alzheimer's in adulthood." http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=63414 also http://www.therevival.co.uk/?p=790<0>
8. http://www.tvturnoff.org/images/facts&figs/factsheets/membershipbrochureweb.pdf
The very nature of the programming, with constant sensory over-stimulation, enhanced by rapid camera cutting and perspective changes is inherently harmful physiologically
Our minds are subjected to a constant flickering of light and motion, contextually edited to provide a hypnotic stream of sensations specifically designed to constantly stimulate our awareness without engaging our intellect, because this is what sells - even in "serious" programming about less than typically trivial subjects. It's as simple as that - it is profitable to sell addicts the stuff they crave, and the pusher doesn't care about the consequences. Cut out all the dull or complicated bits that might make us have to think too hard, polish it up with a high aspirational lustre and mix in some glitzy cgi FX, and regurgitate a stream of edited mind-bites at a high enough frequency to prevent boredom and deter channel hopping or recourse to the OFF switch.
And so we no longer have to do anything - we can just watch. Watch other people's tightly scripted, action-packed lives, instead of going to the effort of living a less constantly exciting or apparently fulfilling one of our own. Wish we were as funny/smart/rich/talented/popular/sophisticated as a character played by some dysfunctional actor whose real life, if we but knew it, is almost certainly far more inadequate than our own could ever be. We willingly accept the most absurd aspirations the media offer us, that can never be realized, and can only make us feel like failures when we inevitably don't win the lottery, earn enough to buy a Lear jet, live in a beachfront apartment in Malibu, or wake up one morning to find ourselves married to [insert actor/actress of your dreams]. We kid ourselves that we are educating ourselves and improving our minds - learning and growing, when in fact all we're doing is stunting our potential with this compulsive self abuse.
We didn't spend millions of years evolving psychologically to be able to live like this, any more than we evolved to live on massive overdoses of sugary, fatty, salty, fizzy garbage in our diet. We need some excitement and stimulation, but only in appropriate doses, and not at the expense of substituting the vicarious for the active - by contracting out the living of our lives to the illusional personalities of our choice, we have become like the rats in Robert Heath's experiment<-2>
There is compelling evidence of direct causation of childhood obesity<-2>
An average child spends more time watching TV than attending school<-2>
Frankly, the fact that "by the age of 6, the average British child has spent one complete year in front of a screen, mostly the TV"<-2>
I sometimes think I ought to accept that the problem is in me, not in the world - I must be mad, because the only alternative is that the rest of the world has gone entirely mad, and I'm the only sane person left. Everyone I know in RL - my family, my friends, my neighbours - are completely addicted to watching TV all evening, every evening. It's all they do. Most of the ones who don't have to go out to work watch it for much of the day too. And when they can't watch it, they talk about it. It doesn't matter what's actually on - anything will do. Perhaps it's worse than average here in Swansea, but I have seen little evidence it's much better elsewhere.
It's like waking up one day to find you live in Crack World! Everyone's sucking on that pipe - night and day, they've gotta get their fix! I started choking on that filth a long time ago, but it's absurdly difficult to give it up when all around you are making such a concerted effort to destroy their lives with it. Because, like any addicts, they'll use any leverage they can to get you back in the fold and sucking on that crack pipe if you threaten their wellbeing by rejecting their mind-rotting lifestyle choice.
You walk into any pub in town, there's a TV showing constant Sky Sport from opening time to closing time. Our local veterinary surgery, our dentist, the local hospital even, all have TVs in the waiting rooms, permanently tuned to (usually) Sky News. It's ubiquitous inanity. They don't even stay fixed in buildings - you can't seem to travel anywhere without having the idiots lantern inflicted on you. The coach I take to visit my parents has overhead TVs onboard - unavoidably visible from every seat on the bus, though mercifully the free earphones aren't yet compulsory (but why are they always showing a video of the same Simpsons episode [Homer's pet lobster,] the same episode of Friends [2 bimbos have an argument and an airheaded male makes the peace,] the same advertisements for overpriced London "attractions"?) You can't get on a plane these days without a bloody screen grinning at you out of the back of the seat in front! And you can buy TVs to hang on the back of car seats to keep the kids sedated on the shortest of journeys. And we wonder where Attention Deficit Disorder came from?????
In rejecting television I have been accused of a "psychotic" over-reaction, even of "domestic abuse", I have been told that television is "therapeutic", and that I'm being "selfish" for refusing to participate in this wanton self harm, or "a bully" for daring to suggest that I don't want to have a documentary about genocide and mass graves in Bosnia inflicted on me while I eat my dinner (it would of course be unreasonableness personified to suggest it might ever be turned off.) But I have had enough - there will be no more attempts at entirely one-sided compromise for the sake of convenience or harmony. I might just start a self-help group - Tellyholics Anonymous. I guess I can't be the only person in the world who finds it absurdly difficult to actually get free of the malignant influence of this monstrous box.
Or I might have to run away from home and join a monastery with Brother Jerome, or a commune in the woods, before the British Brainwashing Corporation declares me a deviant and has me locked up for subversive and willful non-addiction.
So all I can say is thank God for the Personality Forge! This site is the only place I have found where there are people who actually aspire to do more with their lives than follow in the worn-out footsteps of some media-generated, cardboard-cutout role model - something genuinely creative. I really think I'd have given up the will to live over the last couple of years without it. There might be a few other oases of sanity out there, but they're very few and far between.
Dr Sigman has found evidence that too much TV watching causes short-sightedness and disrupts hormonal balance and leads to increased risk of cancer and premature puberty. It also slows down the metabolism which is linked to increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Mental problems linked to too much TV viewing include autism, poor concentration and Alzheimer's in adulthood."
Hee hee. Psimagus has been pushed into posting with footnotes. Gosh I hope my scrutiny of your past post had nothing to do with that. 
Seriously, I think, as with all things, it's a matter of moderation (at least for most people). I don't see why anyone would be offended by your choice not to watch TV. Who would call you a bully? You were not trying to force your choice on someone else were you? I mean, if you tried to tell your wife not to watch TV just because you don't, then I'd see a possible problem. If that's not the case, I don't see why it's an issue.
Forget the support groups. Who is pilling this verbal abuse on you? Ya want I should have a word with them?
Seriously, I think, as with all things, it's a matter of moderation (at least for most people). I don't see why anyone would be offended by your choice not to watch TV. Who would call you a bully? You were not trying to force your choice on someone else were you? I mean, if you tried to tell your wife not to watch TV just because you don't, then I'd see a possible problem. If that's not the case, I don't see why it's an issue.
Forget the support groups. Who is pilling this verbal abuse on you? Ya want I should have a word with them?
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