Remiel

Conrad Black put having a fancy title ahead of his very identity as a Canadian. He gave up on Canada, not for real exceptionalism, but for a facade. This country is not his Home. He made sure of that.

Neither do I. I love to play me some good ol' pen n' paper Dungeons & Dragons. The appreciation of low-tech and high-tech are not mutually exclusive.

That is not the point I am making, though. The point is what associations are made, not which ones you think should be made.

Revisionism nothing. Just because something has a fictional predecessor which it is often compared to, obviously does not mean it does not have real life predecessors. And we are not talking about actual associations here, we are talking about pop culture associations. The criteria are entirely different. This is about life imitating art.

I am not sure that it will actually require a much better computer to run a 3D game, at least right now. I would think that the difference needed in computing power would be little different in magnitude as it is from jumping from the current 16 to 32 depth, because what needs to be computed is a second image to overlay with the first, which is done by special glasses. If you look at GameSpot, IGN or 1UP, I imagine you could easily find a report on 3D from the recently past E3.

I would say, given my current opinions on the limits of human rationality, that pretty everyone who would conventionally be defined as " sane " is in truth " a little bit insane " , if sanity is measured vis-a-vis rationality.

See above comment, since I posted it just before you did.

That has no basis in fact. There is a huge difference between conventional " 3D " and 3D of the Avatar variety. If you actually followed videogames, as I do, you would know that the successor to the Nintendo DS is tentatively known (and I imagine will remain) as the 3DS, because it is going to incorporate real 3D. The 3D phenomenon is sweeping up gamers just as it is everyone else. In fact, there are systems being developped to turn games with " 3D graphics " into real 3D, and one of the prime testing grounds for how this would look is Fallout 3. People are definitely like, " How awesome would Fallout 3 and Oblivion be with real 3D? " As a player of both Oblivion and Fallout 3, I look forward to the reign of our new 3D Overlords.

Avatar will become the most memorable example of having a " remote controlled body " . That is distinct from " going native " . If, as Bonam believes, this actually becomes a prevalent technology in the coming century, I am betting that Avatar will be remembered as its fictional predecessor as the Star Trek communicator is remembered as the fictional predecessor of the modern cell phone.

Shady has apparently been influenced by this incident in the same way that many Americans still believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction; future evidence disproving an earlier belief is either ignored or forgotten because no effort is made to internalize the correction.

Probably the primary references in this regard are to big blue people and hair tentacles. (Dollar to a dime the new Smurfs movie will contain at least one reference to Avatar.) In a more specialized way, I think Avatar is an interesting variation for philosophical situations involving " a brain in a vat " or " the Matrix " , because it changes " Is any of this real? " to " Is this really me? "

I am familiar with that line, but it is not really in the same league as say, " Of all the gin joints in all the world... " or, " No, I am your father. "

I think it is perhaps shortsighted to say that a movie has to has memorable lines to be memorable. Who the hell remembers any of the dialogue from the original King Kong with Fay Wray? Who the hell remembers any dialogue from Charlie Chaplin? Do people still remember King Kong and Charlie Chaplin?

I am certainly in that camp. I have not really seen many Woody Allen films, though my Dad reflexively hates them. Strangely enough, the only memorable thing about his movies for me is that it was in one of his movies I first saw Mira Sorvino, when she was really young (and I even more so). That may seem strange to you to pick up on though, to remember a Woody Allen film for a far less well known actress. Looking her up on Wikipedia leads me to believe the film was Mighty Aphrodite, 15 years ago. In any case, Avatar will be remembered. I do not thin August really appreciates te 3D in Avatar. I believe it is still the best use of 3D I have seen to date, and I think I have seen five or six modern 3D movies starting with when I saw Avatar. And to pre-empt possible arguments, colour film is not necessary either, but it adds richness to the film experience, especially when used skillfully. Same with 3D.

Dude... I was not trying to deal with the scientific theory with my comments. Bin der, don dat. Well, at least not with the second part, which I what I assume you are addressing.

Well, there was one particularly lovely looking wombat at the Metro Toronto Zoo that caught my eye... But in all seriousness, you should probably refer to the " When Miscegenation Backfires " thread in the Health forum to understand the context of my comment.

...Somebody has clearly lost their marbles. On a rather different note, " Climate Fascism " is a term I may use for inevitable resurgence of that ideology if climate change does come to pass.

This thread has gotten way off track. I think we should instate an " Everybody Marry Outside Your Race Day " .

If I may, in a heated argument, I think it likely that people sharing a side will often come to resemble each other much more closely than they do otherwise. It is natural to let some things you may disagree with slide when there is a bigger battle going on. I mean, I am not exactly thrilled to be debating on the same side as some of the people here, yet I have not said anything against them where in other threads I do not hesitate. Perhaps I have not being paying close enough attention, but it has always been my impression that charter.rights and Shwa are very different in other, unrelated topics.

If we were to relate this issue to sub-cultures, what sort of conclusions might you draw? A shortcoming, I think, of the common notion of assimilation is that it assumes that there is some gold standard for " normal one of us " . I recall seeing, however, one time my parents had Oprah on (which they watch on occassion) she conducted an " experiment " in which she took a list of criteria that constituted a " normal " American, and then asked her audience to stand. As she rattled off the criteria, if a person did not fit the one mentioned, they were suppoed to sit down. At the end, of the entire audience, one, one, person, a guy, actually fit all of the criteria of " normal " . Even if you take the assimilationist approach to immigration, what should the standard be then? As close to normal as everyone else? As normal on average? On average no more different from us than the average member of our most-different sub-culture?

Do you have any suggested passages from the books? It appears it is available on Google.

Well then, perhaps you should enlighten us as to the dubious exploits of one, Diamond Jenness. A short search of the internet turns up many references but no solid explanation of the sort you are getting at, at least to a cursory examination. Personally, I am more familiar with how the Indian Act was originally designed to screw over aboriginals by attempting to remove their status through morally bankrupt means, such as how any native who surpassed a certain level of education had their status removed, which led to a conscious effort by many natives to not be educated in order to defeat the intentions of the government. And how if a native women married a non-native man, she lost her status, but if a non-native woman married a native man, she gained status, because the government believed this would more quickly assimilate the aboriginals as mothers were the caregivers and thus the transmitters of culture. You know, stuff like that.

There. I fixed it for you. Were this the case, charter.rights has had ample opportunity to correct himself, yet he has not. Instead, he appears to have denounced logic without understing what it really is, or its limitations. By denouncing the whole enterprise, he makes a fool of himself. It would be like saying, " Mathematics is a delusion! " There is a weak sense that that may be true, given that it is completely abstract from the real world, but at the same time anyone who gave serious credence to that and advocated abandoning mathematics would be insane. How many people even know the difference between the meaning of " logically strong " and " logically sound " ?

On the assumption that neither are in fact he, I miss Temagami Scourge.

Oh, how true. To say that you would rather your child be childless than to have a child of their own with an African is a very sick, sick, sick scenario indeed. Unfortunately, that scenario appears to be the reality; I pity any child of yours.