Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
We don't need cell phones shut off while driving. We need *headsets*. Soon enough that's all cell phones will be...and not too long in the future and they'll be in our skulls. And for the record, I'm in favor of being dependent on technology. After all, the Earth couldn't support a sixth of what it does today if we weren't dependent on technology...
Registered: Jul 2005
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Mant times I've narrowly avoided injury/death due to some ass talking on his/her cell while driving.
Narrowly Avoided? Lucky you. I wish I could have narrowly avoided that stupid nurse lady pulling out of the parking lot with one hand on her phone and the other on her coffee/steering wheel...
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Mant times I've narrowly avoided injury/death due to some ass talking on his/her cell while driving.
Narrowly Avoided? Lucky you. I wish I could have narrowly avoided that stupid nurse lady pulling out of the parking lot with one hand on her phone and the other on her coffee/steering wheel...
My last "close encounter with the stupid kind" was some ass making an illegal U-turn while his neck was holding his phone to his shoulder- thus cutting off the city bus I was stuck behind. Guy never even noticed what he did and just kept talking....
There's a whole series of books detailing some mystery event that destroys all eletronics and (somehow!) firearms in one instant. Monhs after all the massive fires and other disasters have played out, people start roaming packs and some crazy SCA type is the main baddie. A great concept, but the circumstances of the characters coming together is so farfetched as to make SG1 seem like CSPAN.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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"Children of the Western world now think that milk comes from the grocery store. And how many of today's kids even have chores to do? I would bet that less than 2% would even have a clue about planting a garden to raise food for the family."
We aren't a predominantly agrarian society. So kids think milk comes from the grocery store. Back in the '50s, kids thought milk came from a guy in a truck every morning.
The Industrial Revolution was over a century ago. Get over it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
Tim, its the fact that most of the younger generation are complete idiots. I like my tech stuff too, but if some catastrophe did occur that wiped out the tech or a disaster occurred that people couldn't rely on it for everything, what would society do? There isn't a lot of basic survival instincts in vogue today other than the aforementioned gang mentality. My point is that this generation believes it is here to be entertained and that it is OWED to them. They would not be able to sustain themselves without tech, and most likely would die quickly or become savages. We saw in New Orleans idiots running around stealing things that are pretty meaningless when your very life is at stake. "Go steal some Ipods and electronics or try to find food" and we saw them make the former choice.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
It would be funny to see kids today have to rediscover the library. I never see anyone in there that isn't in elementary school or over 30.
Registered: Jul 2002
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
Hey, I'm not over 30, and while I don't go to the library per se, I still read. I just prefer to buy my books. Library books are nasty. They usually have pages torn out, and are covered in blood, or spit, or semen...
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
Amen to that. There's no greater joy that having your own copy of a book which you can cover with your own blood, or spit, or semen...
Registered: Feb 2005
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I think you guys are going to the wrong library.
Registered: Jul 2002
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
Probably. I borrowed The Bear and The Dragon from the local library and it had dozens of pages missing. Page 56: Gone. Page 233: Gone. Pages 249-254: Gone. Pages 501-509: Gone.
So I went and bought it. The point is, when you check something out that a hundred other people already have (Be it book, or movie) it's going to get wrecked. Because there's always someone out there who thinks "Hey, it's not mine, so why should I bother taking care of it?" I've got five free movie rentals from Blockbuster because they kept giving me DVD's that looked like they spent a winter on the sidewalk.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
OTOH, the whole "mint" thing with comics is a blessing for libraries. One dog-eared page may send a true comics fan screaming to the nearest library to make a donation and get rid of the ruined thing...
I'm currently waiting for slightly spoiled Sillage albums (Wake for ye English speakers, but the translations are annoyingly censored) to hit the shelves that way. They're too damn expensive to acquire by other means, not to mention mostly sold out.
posted
I must admit though some books stores also take poor care of their books. At Barnes and Noble I go to in Manhattan the pages in some books are sometimes torn or folded. Plus it doesn't help that the other customers seem to mistake it for a library and are always sitting on the floor, reading. They just don't sit anywhere-no, they have to block entryways and entire shelves of books. I had to ask this one fat lady to move because her gargantuan behind was blocking the section of Star Wars/ Star Trek novels.
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
And I'll bet she gave YOU a dirty look, as if it was your fault for her being in the way and fat.
I like libraries, but I can't stand bookshops that have a sort of cafe in them, and encourage people to read the whole book in the shop, pretending to be libraries. Also, those little lables that some shops have where some customer has written a review that they thought was "cute". They are not, no matter how many flowers you draw or even if you draw little hearts instead of dots above a lower case 'i'.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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