The Future Is Passing Us By

[pure_doxyk]

Finally, somebody said it:  The United States is SO BACKWATER now.  And it’s a crushing disappointment to sci-fi fans like me who, as children, were told we were sitting in the cradle of the future.

Future?  Yeah?  Japan has robots, China has a growing space program while ours is disappearing…the whole U.S. doesn’t have a single Maglev train, but

Comments

[sanguinity]

I've been hearing it for a while now, on biology blogs, in engineering trade magazines, etc. Our science education is crap, and it's showing all over.

(Maybe we should use this as a generalized campaign against the religious right? That they have stolen our flying cars?)

And as for that unlicensed niftiness on the internet? Are you getting the impression, too, that the internet is becoming all corporate, homogenized, and rulebound? Not that the lovely anarchist niftiness has yet gone away, not by any means, but that there's a trend...

I meant to ask a while ago -- what is it that you're using to import your Wildcard entries to LJ? Is it a feature of WordPress, or does it work on other blog hosts/software as well?

[pure_doxyk]

It's a Wordpress plugin called Livejournal Crosspost, I believe. Something very close to that anyway. It's pretty awesome in that it works. No fiddling...just...works. Yay!

Personally, I wouldn't care if the campaign against the Immoral Majority centered around their choice of shoes, as long as their WAS one. But if there is, I'm not hearing about it. And yeah, stealing the future (in more than one sense) would make a good angle, wouldn't it?

The Internet is getting bigger all the time, and the parts of it that get the most attention are those that buy advertising, so I can understand your impression. Thankfully though, the unlicensed bits are spreading just as quickly. Censorship is a real issue, not because it takes content away so much as it keeps us from getting to it, and that, I think, is a big problem. But every time I boot up the ol' Net, I still get the warm fuzzy feeling that shit exists out here that couldn't anywhere else. *aaah*

[sanguinity]

Then the homogenizers have gotten their tentacles into my browsing habits, and thus my brain! Aaaaaaugh!

The "New Atheists" have been taking them on, and have gotten a lot of notice for doing so, but it'll be years-to-decades before that movement will bear much fruit. And the fruit it'll bear, I think, would be to make it less outrageous to criticize religion, creating space for a more moderate, more popular movement to take on the Immoral Majority.

[pure_doxyk]

I suppose you could be right about the "New Atheists" -- I tend to stay away from them because, as you alluded to, they're almost as extremist as the people they're opposing. But if it make criticism of the obvious flaws in religion -- especially the religions we've got here -- easier and more frequent, they can be as nuts as they want.

I do get a kick out of watching people recoil in horror as they realize that the New Atheists are flinging--gasp!--SCIENCE in their catapults. Augh!