I wonder what this tells us by DEVERSE

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

I wonder what this tells us

POSTED BY: DEVERSE
UPDATED: Monday, August 3, 2015 15:23
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Monday, August 3, 2015 12:22 PM

Hey, Ive been in a firefight before! Well, I was in a fire. Actually, I was fired from a fry-cook opportunity.

About the size of a six-year-old child, hitchBOT relies on the kindness of strangers to hitchhike its way to adventure.
HitchBOT is a social experiment to test human psychology when confronted with a technological novelty as well as "trust" and safety.
Equipped with GPS and 3G wireless to post its adventures on Facebook, the robot also has voice recognition and processing abilities that allows it to draw on Wikipedia for conversation topics to make small talk and is able to hold text conversations with multiple people at the same time over the internet. It has an LED screen so it can message humans using text, and can make some facial expressions.
The only the only movement it can make is with its hitchhiking arm.

In 2014 it hitchhiked its way across Canada in 26 days. In 2015 hitchBOT hiked across Germany in 10 days and then spent 21 days traveling the Netherlands before embarking on an adventure across the USA on July 17.
After 2 weeks in the USA, someone destroyed it in Philadelphia - the city of Brotherly Love.

http://www.hitchbot.me

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hitchbot-destroyed-in-philadelphia-e
nding-u-s-tour-1.3177098

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Monday, August 3, 2015 12:28 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

That we collectively have given up on the idea of society? That the poor, elderly, sick, disabled, undereducated, and marginalized are told to take a flying fuck, while TPTB pursue ever-greater profits? That fixing what ails us ... including underpinning our "economy" (and therefore our society) with sociopathy is now considered beyond our capability ... and perhaps even beyond our interest? That we have become callous?

Nothing holds us together anymore. I saw that in the "home" thread. We're just a bunch of individuals who are encouraged to lie, cheat, and steal our way to success. And if we can't manage that, we can always vandalize something. That's what happens when you consistently reward sociopathy, and take advantage of kindness, hard work, and responsibility.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Monday, August 3, 2015 1:58 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
That we collectively have given up on the idea of society? That fixing what ails us ... is now considered beyond our capability ... and perhaps even beyond our interest? That we have become callous?

From Canada I have a nearly perfect example of just that:
www.cbc.ca/news/technology/nasa-discussed-not-telling-astronauts-about
-columbia-s-doom-1.1390174
Wayne Hale, a flight director who later ran the shuttle program for NASA, in his blog tells for the first time the story of his late boss who seemingly suggested giving up when it's hopeless.

The boss, mission operations chief Jon Harpold, asked the now-retired Hale a what-if question after a meeting that determined — wrongly — that Columbia was safe to land despite some damage after takeoff.

"You know there is nothing we can do about damage to the (thermal protection system)," Hale quotes Harpold a decade later. "If it has been damaged, it's probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. Don't you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done until the air ran out."

This was a what-if type question that conveyed a fatalistic attitude about the heat shield system being unfixable, which was "a wrong-headed cultural norm that we had all bought into," Hale said in a Thursday telephone interview.

"There was never any debate about what to tell the crew," he said.

NASA officials were overconfident in the heat shield on Columbia. A day after launch, NASA saw video of the foam from the shuttle's fuel tank hit the shuttle wing, something that had happened before.

NASA managers even sent the crew a 15-second video clip of the foam strike and "made it very clear to them no, no concerns," according to the independent board that later investigated the accident. Eight times, NASA had the opportunity to get a closer look at the damage — using military satellites — and NASA ignored those chances to see how bad the problem was, the accident board concluded.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, August 3, 2015 2:36 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Is this comment about fatalism in response to Signy's fatalistic post that our society is beyond repair?

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Monday, August 3, 2015 2:44 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

So, I read Cary Tennis from time to time. I don't always agree with him, but his viewpoints are always enlightening.

Anyway, this is a recent letter from his column. This is our society, in one person's life

Dear Cary,

I am 48, have hep C and Stage 2 cirrhosis of the liver. I have no job, missed too much work sick. Mom is all I have, Dad just died. She is 76 and we live together on $750 a month. I am skinny from being sick, so not working and being skinny, everyone calls me a crackhead behind my back.

My mom’s mind is gone and I isolate in my room, smoking pot to have an appetite. I owe IRS, court for tickets, and about $120 to people. I don’t have it. I sold my car to pay rent, and have to walk miles because I can’t afford a bus. I see nothing but homeless me, alone, broke and sick. I’m so scared, and see no hope. I hate being me.

Hopeless:

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Monday, August 3, 2015 2:49 PM

THGRRI

Perhaps we're looking at this the wrong way. We all know that humanity has it's undesirables. I say look how long it took for the robot to run across one.

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Monday, August 3, 2015 3:06 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

After running across scores - perhaps hundreds - of people in three countries across the globe during 57 days, it encountered perhaps a dozen in the US in 2 weeks and was demolished.

I'm SURE that was just a coincidence!

(That statement was irony.)

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Monday, August 3, 2015 3:21 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, I read Cary Tennis from time to time. I don't always agree with him, but his viewpoints are always enlightening.

Anyway, this is a recent letter from his column.

Only if recent means WEDNESDAY, JAN 19, 2011 07:20 PM CST at least according to www.salon.com/2011/01/20/in_a_tough_spot/

Cary Tennis ends that particular column:
I’m just saying that once you accept both your misfortune and your divinity it will be a whole lot easier to accomplish the sometimes dreary and soul-draining actions required to wring some tiny succor out of our dry and balky state agencies of public welfare.

Because we are not just material creatures but creatures of thought and light and feeling, we are never wholly subject to problems of money and disease and loss. There is always something more to us. We are much more than our missed court dates and our poor appetites. We are much more than our rags and our bills.

Until we are actually dead, we always have this spark in us that is consciousness, and this consciousness can spread to the heavens and to the beginning of time and to infinity.

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Monday, August 3, 2015 3:23 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Oh - sorry about that. I got it from his website where it was just recently posted, and didn't look at the date. MY BAD!

http://carytennis.com/category/advice-2/advice-column/

As I said, I don't always agree with his advice. But I think he was addressing the person's mindset in the face of inevitable and possibly fatal misery. Personally, I would have tried to be more pragmatic.

One thing he did mention, that I concur with, is this: ... dreary and soul-draining actions required to wring some tiny succor out of our dry and balky state agencies of public welfare.

That is our society, in a nutshell, when you measure our concern for people - instead of, say, profits, or military power.

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