RoboCop 2014

There was obvious political commentary in RoboCop. Over the top in many cases. I liked it. The movie started by dealing with one of my favorite subjects: drones. While the opening sequence was clearly an exaggeration of the attitudes it is also clear to anyone who is thinking long term that such drones will be the future of the US (and other) militaries as well as domestic policing.

One of the things that Sam Jackson's character does very well is to articulate the arguments that will be used to push for more drones. Is the senate pro crime? Is the senate for the death of American soldiers? Is the senate against saving the lives of citizens?

Mark my words when I say that these will be the very same arguments used as more and more automated technology is deployed by the state and citizens will be emotionally primed to accept these challenges. Risk is bad. Who wishes harm to the American soldiers? Who wants to be seen as pro crime? Already we have seen a proliferation of legislation with emotionally charged names and attached to emotionaly charged events. If you oppose a piece of gun legislation you are pro child killing. You are pro mall shooting.

Sam Jackson's character looks dead into the camera when he makes his charges, much like our cable news talking heads do. I was left wondering how many people in the audience really thought about the reality of his questions.

Understand that the defense department is, at this very moment, funding research into automated vehicles able to navigate various terrains without human input. Japan's Honda is going full on with their AIBO robot. Understand that this WILL be happening.

The next issue was the medical issue. Murphy has been reduced to lungs, heart, throat and head after his “event”. It's pretty clear he had no living will cause his wife is left to make a decision about his life that we find out he clearly did not want for himself.

Side note, how much blood did they have to remove given the smaller amount of “body” (if you want to call it that) he has? The brain uses 70% of the glucose in the body and 25% of the oxygen. Does he require less breathing to maintain optimal oxygen levels?

Anyway, the interesting proposition presented in the movie is that being human is all (or exclusively) about what happens in the brain. The body doesn't matter. But of more interest to me is that HE had no choice. His wife made a choice for him and then he was made into a robot for the sole purpose of serving the state and the profits of a corporation. Clearly with the type of body he was given (I guess flesh like material wasn't something that was being researched), there was never an intention to give him his life back, unless you think that his life consisted only of solving and preventing crime.

Maybe it's just me but the question I asked myself was how, when this guy gets “aroused” (in the mind) how exactly does he release that? I was pretty clear that he “enjoyed” his wife. The movie was also quite clear that his sex life was done for (not even taking into consideration that he must be hooked up to the blood-nutrient machine. I suppose we are to take the lesson that so long as he's alive he should be grateful.

I dunno.

I would think that a company with such technological advances would have been long able to produce human looking appendages. Even now we have the technology to repair the skin of burn victims without leaving the tell tale “burn” patterns and look that accompanies skin grafts. In the last “suit up” scene, I fully expected to see a more 'human” body to pop out of the ground. Maybe it's because I reject that being human, alive, is simply about the brain and it's processing of signals.

I suppose I would eat the red pill too.

It could come down to this: Would you prefer to be dead or “alive”, able to do many great things and unable to feel anything except whatever it feels like to have a malfunctioning suit? Take the questions seriously. The technology that will give us more artificial limbs whether they be as replacements for damaged/amputated ones, or as voluntarily added will be here sooner than later.

Some parents outraged that steamy 'Drunk In Love' performance aired at 8 p.m.

From the NY Daily News:

Some watchers took to Twitter complaining that Beyoncé's sexiness right at the beginning of the show was inappropriate, considering some children may have still been watching at that hour.

If you are a parent and have your kids up watching grown people TV you have no business complaining because you are already fucking up.

Tale of two guards: Kennedy Airport security personnel show divide in compensation

Kennedy Airport security guards Prince Jackson and Dolores Holman work the same job — but they receive very different pay.

The 56-year-old Jackson makes $8 an hour, receives no medical benefits and gets five days of paid vacation. Holman, 51, has a far cushier gig. She rakes in $17.43 an hour, enjoys full medical and dental coverage and gets 15 days of paid vacation. Holman even has an employer-sponsored 401(k) plan — a perk that Jackson can only dream about.

1) Clearly the company that hired Dolores Holman did not get the memo that she was to be paid 25% less that Prince Jackson.

2) At no point did I read that Prince Jackson was attempting to get employment at a security firm that at least pays better. It is indeed wrong that he is paid so little while others doing the same work are getting 50& more than he is but one does not sit on one's ass on your time off and NOT look for better work for better pay while complaining about the differences waiting for some savior to come by and fix stuff for you.

App Store Pulls 'Barbie' Plastic-Surgery App Following Backlash

The First Lady of the United States just said:

"Women should have the freedom to do whatever they need to do to feel good about themselves,

So that would include plastic surgery. So why pull the App? I mean if women should be able to do "anything" to feel good then "whatever" includes plastic surgery. So which is it?

Twitter's Block

So Twitter changed the behavior of blocking and people are upset.

Back when I was on Twitter I had blocked and been blocked. No big deal. Twitter represents some of the worst aspects of people. First problem: People thought that "Their" twitter timeline was "theirs". Firstly, Twitter is a free online service owned by Twitter and not any of the individual users. The users of Twitter generate content for Twitter, which is then used by Twitter to generate advertising revenue. Twitter is about as much yours as the dollar in my pocket is yours. Or for a better analogy, Twitter is yours about as much as the apartment you rent each month is yours.

Secondly on this "my timeline" thing: If you have a public account, then anything you say there is about the same as speaking in a public forum. Anyone can "hear" you and is free to respond to your public pronouncements. If you don't like being responded to in public then don't speak in public. Seems simple but a LOT of people don't get that.

So here comes blocking. When I did the blocking all I was interested in was not seeing the dumb ass comments reach my timeline. Here I use "my" as my subscription rather than my property. I could care less about what or whether the person I had blocked could no longer see what I was saying. After all, I made "public" posts that ANYONE could see anyway.

But I think I understand the real reason behind the uproar over the blocking change. See there are a group of people who like to block and report people who have, shall we say, differing opinions on certain topics. In fact some of these people have created an app that will add these people to a block list for all subscribers. What this amounts to are people deciding that they want to be little censor police. Not only do they not want to "hear" what others are saying, they want to deprive those persons from being able to "hear" and respond.

I think Twitter's reasoning is quite right. If you have a public account ('cause you're looking for attention anyway) you shouldn't be able to prevent people from seeing what you wrote. Seeing what you wrote is NOT harassment. Commenting on what you wrote in public back in public is not harassment. bombarding you with commentary after asking to not be addressed is harassment. The new "blocking" does this.

This reminds me of the recent request for Twitter to add or change how you report abuse. Apparently some people, particularly in the UK were perturbed by a number of rape threats made to them by random twitter persons. In the UK making a rape threat is illegal. Rather than report the accounts to the police, the persons in question wanted Twitter to change how one reports abuse. The two questions I had were: 1) What exactly was wrong with the original reporting mechanism (I used the block and report all the time on tweet deck). 2) If one took the threats seriously, why not report to the police? Certainly a visit by the local constable would be far more effective a deterrent for actual rapists than a twitter ban (which of course could be removed by creating another account).

What a lot of these complaints (to a company that is neither profitable or charging to use its product) seem to me are about self centered people who are used to being able to demand things just because. I can understand a paying customer complaining about a product they paid for, but a service that is free? Take what you get or move along. I hear Weibo is a great service.

Ultimately there was nothing wrong with the change. The problem here are users who wish to police other people in a public forum because they do not understand the meaning of public.

And The Men What?

Reading this piece on Indian dating (marriage) sites I found the following:

What those factors are, exactly, has changed as the country has, but the crux of the matter remains constant: if you’re an Indian woman, it’s statistically likely that your parents will choose the man with whom you spend the rest of your life.

Think about that statement there.

Done?

See the problem?

No?

OK. Marriage is a union of two (or more) persons. So if in India a marriage is arranged then not only is the Indian woman going to spend the rest of her life with a man that was arranged for her, but HE is going to spend the rest of his life with her.

Since that is the case why focus on the "Indian woman" rather than the arranged couple? Oh right, no need to consider what men are thinking or doing because all they are doing is oppressing.

Of course then there is the color matter.

Sure, I’d have my points of appeal, namely in the sections reserved for Education (Bachelor’s) and Complexion (Very Fair).

But we'll leave that for another blog and another blog entry.

Lack of female leadership in Silicon Valley “just as bad” as Wall Street (?)

Question for Salon.com: Is it possible for them to post a piece about women that does not include sexist and unsupported commentary about men?

Take the commentary found in this piece from Salon:

Twitter Inc.’s lack of women on its board is “a joke,” showing that Silicon Valley is no better than Wall Street when it comes to female representation, said Sallie Krawcheck, a former executive at Bank of America Corp.

A "joke" to whom? Why? Oh because there are no women on the board. Well there are no black people either. Will Salon allot space for someone to write about that too? Anyway. Why is it such a joke? Read on.

Twitter, the microblogging site that raised $2.09 billion in a initial public offering this month, has an all-male, seven- member board.

Does the above sound like "a joke" to you? a company is making 2.09 billion. Offers a free service that is used worldwide. That's a joke?

Twitter has said it’s in discussions to diversify its board.

Why? It just gathered 2.09 billion dollars as is. Why should it do anything different? No, really? WHY? And if it is a matter of "representation" then I think we should force Twitter to hire black and Hispanic board members, Well I don't know about the latter, but I know about the former. But here's the sexist kicker:

Women think differently than men and “can see problems they don’t see,” said Browner, who was an adviser to President Barack Obama and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993 to 2001.

Really? Women, by virtue of having ovaries and titties "can see problems they [men] don't see." No really. That's some sexist shit. Don't see it. Well let's just change up the sentence:

"Men think differently from women and "can see problems they don't see."

Do you even THINK such a statement would be tolerated? How about this:

"Whites think differently than blacks and "can see problems they don't see".

No really. Do you even THINK such a sentence would see the light of day in Salon? Of course not but you can get a woman to make a blatantly sexist comment and it goes unchallenged by anyone on the editorial staff. How the fuck does this happen? Back to Twitter though.

I repeat. Twitter had an IPO that netted 2.09 billion bucks. Exactly WHAT problems does Twitter need to see that the board isn't seeing that this woman knows about? It seems to me that the board of Twitter is doing a bang up job.

Here's how you get onto a board or become CEO: Start your own business. Create your own product and work damn hard. Then instead of attempting to shame people into bringing you on board, people will come to you. Take it from the black guy, people HATE when they are forced to deal with you because of some physical attribute rather than because your fucking good at what you do.

So back to the question:

Can Salon.com write an article about women in [enter business here] that does not include sexist comments about men or at least challenges them when they appear in quoted material?