Well, it’s not exactly a poke in the eye, but this system is certainly taking a clooooose look at some eyes.
Orwell had his timing off a wee bit, but really, is this sort of thing inevitable? And perhaps most importantly, when will ActiBlizzard make iris identification the new account security feature? I mean, people are already posting photos of themselves on FaceBook, so this is just a hop, skip and a jump for RealID. Besides, eye scanning is better than a literal poke in the finger for ID testing.
—
This makes me want to play Monopoly, or maybe just indulge in some graphical design.
Do you think putting Puzzle Pirates Ringers on the money would be a bad idea? Cleaver for the $100… Nemo for the $50! Maybe World of Warcraft key characters? Ah, the debate: Thrall or Jaina for the $100? Maybe one of each with concurrent Horde/Alliance crests and graphical design… collectors’ items! Alamo for the $50?
—
This sort of explains it all:
U.S. students don’t understand math, science or history because they aren’t being taught
So my next question is: When do we get to apply for citizenship of Azeroth? Forget this pansy Real World thing.
I’m reserving my Tauren Druid now.
—
Bonus reading if you want something a bit more… fiesty.
It’s always interesting to me to find the good and useful points in a reasoned rant. Sometimes, rants are simply anger incarnate, but more often than not, there’s something real under the hood, something worth thinking about and deciding where your own opinions lie. For me, the take-home thought this time is “what do you do when compromise with someone who wants you dead isn’t an option?” Plenty of storytelling seeds in that one.
Anyway, it’s not like game bloggers ever rant without having a good reason, right? Sure, sometimes you have to dig to find it, and sometimes it’s just kicking up a storm for attention, but that’s just part of this silly “internet” thing.
…and now I wonder what Freud would have done with the internet. Can you imagine the psychoanalysis he’d come up with prowling the web? Would he get stuck on the tvtropes website, too? Would he get stuck endlessly trying to correct people? Would he have a FaceBook and Twitter account?
@Freud: Have returned from 4Chan foray. Paper forthcoming. … I need a cigar.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
Once upon a time the Islamic world was the most advanced and freest in the world while the Christian world was backward and outright stupid. At some point that flipped. I do wonder though, has everyone forgotten the Catholic Irish bombing Britain? The abortion clinic bombings? Deaths or injury during conversions from homosexuality? I wish I could say we’re the civilized world, but in so many ways we’re just as savage; that is, if the game is to cherry-pick the most blatant offenses from each side.
The first thing I noticed about the proposed $10 Bill and its Bill of Rights was #4 is incorrectly listed as “Right of Search & Seizure”. The 4th Amendment is actually an Individual Right to Protection from Search & Seizure.
I think it’s time everyone in the world just died. Let’s keep, say, 100 people alive (I’ll choose who lives and dies) and just start over.
It will cost you a Jaina $100 bill to stay alive and join the party. But once you show up I’ll have to scan your iris to make sure that it is indeed you who sent me the $100 Jaina. If you fail, I’ll kill you instantly.
Yes, mass extinction I think will be the only solution. Once everyone is dead, we’ll clone ourselves into advanced robots, then kill ourselves and let machines rule the world. At least machines won’t be as stupid or brutal as we humans are. Then again, they may look at the iris scanners and start worshiping them, believing them to be their creator, in which case they’ll start to persecute any robot who doesn’t believe in their gods.
Oh my, even stopping humanity can’t seem to stop ignorance or abuses of power. Let’s just blow the whole world up!!!
Cap’n, that’s just a little change, not worth noting, right? I mean, who knows what any of that legalese means anyway? /snark
Bleh.
The thing that stuck out most to me was that the two presidents that designer chose to highlight are perhaps the two most damaging to the economy. The omission of Washington and Lincoln is curious as well. I guess they are still covered by President’s Day. *shrug*
That said, I do kinda like the idea of making the bills different sizes. Coins already are (though the dime breaks the logic of a size heirarchy), so why not bills?
Klep, did you happen to read the article and the comment thread? You’re absolutely right, there’s an easy case to be made against either side by cherry picking. That said, one major trend of the conversation is that things like the Sharia law and Al-Taqiyya are closer to those savage days, but are more prominent in modern Islam than things like stoning and other weird Mosaic/Jewish savageries are in modern Christianity and Judaism. Yes, they all still have trouble, it’s a matter of relative frequency and severity.
It’s not so much that each religion has its troubles (because they most certainly do), it’s that Islam seems to be a bit behind the curve in getting away from them. That may or may not be accurate, but it’s an impression that isn’t helped by things like suicide bombers killing in the name of Allah and stories of honor killings tied to Sharia law. This whole “Cordoba building” thing near ground zero for the 9/11 attacks is also curiously antagonistic. If peace and understanding is the goal, it’s not a good idea to piss off the neighbors. (Which applies equally to that Koran-burning pastor in Florida.) Big “if”, I guess.
And yes, it’s a curious and unfortunate inversion of history. I’m also oddly reminded of Egypt; it was also once a bastion of civilization, education and freedom, but it slipped into slavery and savagery. Ditto for the Roman empire. It seems almost inevitable when dealing with humans. Maybe these things go in waves?
Anyway, my question “what do you do when compromise with someone who wants you dead isn’t an option?” absolutely can apply to wingnutters from any religion or philosophy. That’s why I used it as my take-home point; it’s applicable to a lot of different things, even internet trolling, in its way.
Gronthe, good thing we have enough explosives to raze the planet, then, aye? Wouldn’t want to do the job halfway, would we?
It’s probably a good thing we haven’t colonized Mars yet. It would be more logistics messiness to have to wipe them out, too.
Tesh, speaking as a former Muslim, if you would like to get hooked up with examples of Muslims who condemn this sort of behavior (and have spoken out about it, though curiously their press releases rarely see the light of media coverage), or learn more about how some of the more inflammatory clerics don’t speak for the Muslim world due to the fact that Islam doesn’t have a central hierarchy of authority, feel free to e-mail me.
Aye, the lack of media coverage on those who condemn this is unfortunately light. I’ve heard incidentally that such (Muslims quietly speaking out against the radical elements) isn’t uncommon, so I personally don’t have much of a beef with Islam in general, preferring to believe the best.
Even the notion of a lack of central authority isn’t quite what I’m getting at, though. It’s almost more of a cultural/doctrinal question. There’s no real central Christian or Jewish authority, but those cultures have swung largely away from some of the more brutal aspects of their history, and at least in Christianity, Jesus shifted the doctrine from punishment to “turning the other cheek”.
Is there a similar shift in Islam? The perception, fair or not, is that it is still stuck in brutal ways of old. Hyperbolic media feeds that perception, sure, but is there anything to it?
Thanks for offering some more information. I’ll email you here in a bit. I do believe that there is a lot more going one than what internet rants or news outlets would suggest.
The ‘ground zero mosque’ has been in some stage of planning for quite a while. Just a year ago it was actually quite popular with many conservatives, in addition to the expected liberal crowd. For the most part no one really cared. Then some outsiders decided to blow it up into some huge terrorist conspiracy. I suppose my only objection is that it’s so far away, since Ground Zero really is the best place to have a cultural center to help dispel negative stereotypes.
I think one of the reasons the Muslim world seems to savage and backward is the governments. So many are brutal dictators who do not have the support of their majority, but are instead kept up by a fringe of extremists, or a highly indoctrinated populace. Just look at Iran. Sure their government is completely nuts and backward, but the average Iranian is a fairly normal, sensible person.
It’s also worth noting that Islam is much younger than Christianity and hasn’t had as much time to sort out its problems. With the Shia-Sunni split they’re almost in their own version of the Protestant-Catholic split. Add in constant outside influence and it’s no wonder Islam is having so many problems.
“The thing that stuck out most to me was that the two presidents that designer chose to highlight are perhaps the two most damaging to the economy.”
What? After FDR we had a wonderful boom time, despite pouring resources into militarization. Then we had a spree of deregulation and the economy destabilized. As of yet I can’t say Obama has been great or terrible, but I’m pretty sure he won’t be a “most damaging to the economy”.
My economic background is more Austrian than Keynesian, if that helps. It seems to me that FDR made the Depression *worse* and longer with central spending, and Obama is in the same boat. Yes, time will tell how his policies play out, but he’s running with a similar playbook as FDR. It’s no surprise that they would share a stage on the currency design… but it’s not a stage I have any use for. As far as I’m concerned, government’s job isn’t to “create or save jobs”, it’s to get out of the way. Top down central planning and stimulus spending just don’t sit well with me.
Not that Bush was any better, mind. Or McCain, should he have taken the last race.
Oh, and on the Cordoba building, I like the idea of dispelling stereotypes (and if it were closer in, that might indeed be better, especially if it were part of a larger cooperative approach), but if you’re annoying people by trying to help, it’s not constructive to keep pushing, no matter the good intentions. (Ditto for a lot of our foreign policy, really, so it’s not an “anti-Islam” thing I’m floating here.)
It’s like that old saw: “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink it”. Forcing the issue just creates more antagonism and reinforces negativity.
I just wonder if going away quietly into the night so as not to stir up trouble with people who think your presence is a thinly-veiled threat to national security and the practice of your religion is unAmerican is the answer?
The placement of Park 51 might be controversial, and it might be seen as antagonistic, but it will force a confrontation about what “American” values and, *hopefully*, put forth a bit more information about American Muslims into the spotlight, sensationalist imams aside. Acquiesing to aggressive opposition will just postpone this confrontation another 10, 20, 50 years, when the people fearful of Muslims wake up and realize that American Muslims make up over 10% of the population.
Or perhaps I am too hopeful, given the trend thus far.
I got your e-mail, and am working to compile links, so please be patient, I am not ignoring you!
Theoretically I’d be all for “get government out of the way”. But in practice if labor isn’t trying to manipulate government to their benefit, then business is. After all, no one really wants a level playing field, they just want it tipped in their favor. 😛 I see industries where capitalism works best and other where socialism works best: I like our capitalist cars and our socialist tanks. I also think government is necessary to stabilize the market and to protect consumers against fraud and dangerous products. While in theory a perfectly rational consumer and producer system would lead to the ideal economic outcome, in practice it’s pretty obvious that no one is perfectly rational, so there should be measures to counteract that.
I’d say that it makes sense to not keep pushing, except that I see no benefit to them backing down. There isn’t going to be an outpouring of goodwill for moving the mosque, they’ll just keep being mad that it was even suggested to put in there in the first place. Or in the analogy, if the horse is going to complain even if you let it leave the water, you might as well keep offering it a drink.
Yeah, I don’t want them to give up on the project, just be willing to concede some ground to reduce the antagonism. Whether that means waiting for the larger dialogue to settle down or move the project further from ground zero, I’m not particularly fussed over. I personally don’t even object to the building, where it is or even in closer. It’s the apparent refusal to make concessions that is causing trouble, and it’s *that* that bothers me, since it runs contrary to the stated goal of peaceful understanding.
You win more arguments with honey than vinegar, as it were.
Oh, and take your time, Randomessa. There’s no rush as far as I’m concerned. I’m grateful for your insight.
Oh, and Klep, yes, I think government’s role is to facilitate punishing fraud via a court system, I’m not arguing for complete anarchy. I just think it’s not their role to prevent us from making mistakes, which at times may include financial ones. It’s certainly not their role to control industry. Rectify abuses (in either direction), yes, steer the production, no.
What constitutes fraud? If there is lead in a children’s toy, is that fraud? They never said there isn’t. Should the market produce a testing agency that looks for dangerous things? Who are they accountable to and where are their interests? Lawsuits can be extremely expensive, often more expensive than just having a set of regulations and enforcement set up in the first place. And then there are situations like the recent spill in the gulf. BP did not commit fraud, it did not lie, it quite possibly did nothing illegal except breaking government regulations. Fraud does not account for all the negative externalities. Neither does government regulation, but it can help close the gap.
Oh, and the Republican campaign strategy disproves your honey argument. 😛
*chuckle* Yes, fraud isn’t the only thing out there, that’s just what came to mind. Whatever the case, it’s more about helping out when things go bad, not making sure nothing bad ever happens.
Is it worth noting that I distrust both Repubs and Dems? 😉
I suppose I prefer a more proactive approach. Of course it is a slippery slope to total socialist control of your mind and wallet, but that’s what democracy is for, to stop leaders from going to extremes. Maybe we’re not going to get anywhere further, but I wanted to thank you for being polite about this subject that too easily turns into “you’re a socialist” “oh yea we’ll you’re a fascist!”
Aye, running to the extremes doesn’t seem to ever help a discussion much. And yes, there’s definitely a balance to be struck between allowing leaders certain powers and citizens reining those in. 🙂
Thanks to you too for not going all hyperbolic on me. These political posts are always interesting.
Klepsacovic, I find your attempt to equate the current offenses and atrocities of Islam with that of Christianity’s past offenses are just plain false and demonstrate a lack of scholarship.
This notion that Islam was at some point in history superior to Christianity is false and wishful thinking by those who refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming foundational contribution that Christianity has made to the arts, the sciences and Western civilization in general.
I find it laughable that suddenly the left in America — the most irreligious people in America — suddenly cares about freedom of religion and upholding the Constitution with regard to the Mosque at Ground Zero. The left now seeks to instruct and even lecture the families of the victims of 9/11 that they are in fact bigots and Islamaphopic because they vehemently disagree with the building of this mosque. How dare they!
The very same left that in the past decade has unfairly and viciously created this false straw-man fallacy that “the Religious Right is coming for your freedoms” while at the same time ignoring the cancerous spread of Sharia and Islam throughout the world.
Why are the feminists silent on the barbarism, the stonings, the female mutilations committed against women by Islamists?
Why is the gay community silent against the hangings and murders of gays in Islamic countries?
Islam has metastasized into a religion of hatred and violence and subjugation. It is incompatible with Western values of freedom, democracy, tolerance and human rights.
I’ll close my comments with a quote from Winston Churchill:
[blockquote]”How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!
Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid
qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and
proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
-Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages
248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899). [/blockquote]
Wolfshead, my question is mainly rooted in what the doctrine of Islam teaches and what part is just the culture. It’s like the difference between the Oral Law and the Mosaic Law in Judaism. There are significant differences between the two, and cultural effects that warp doctrines. We saw the two clash when Jesus interacted with the Pharisees.
Rnadomessa sent me a fair number of links to research, and I’ll probably post a follow-up at some point. I’d like to think that there’s a cultural cancer at the root of the troubles we see with Islam, not a doctrinal ulcer, but I’m reserving judgment on that at the moment. I’ve seen evidence for both, frankly, but want to dig more.
@Wolfshead
I think you need to be careful when using the word islam as a synonym to islamistic. every religion is capable of the same evil in the hand of fundamentalists. claiming that all moslems are islamists is wrong and a very black-and white view of things. “Islam has metastasized into a religion of hatred and violence and subjugation” is really a wrong thing to say: it’s not just horribly undifferentiated but lacks the same scholarship you mentioned to Kleps. it reeks of blind anger to me, and cant be fruitful to any insightful discussion.
you should also always second-guess the way islam is presented in the media – no media is independent, they’re all full of propaganda in one way or another, serving a more right or left point of view (and just like the investors behind game companies, the media have their financial manipulators in the background).
what we hear of in the media is fundamentalism and it’s not representative of a majority of people or religion. many things you listed as how islam is, would actually be disputed by more modern moslems who are the silent majority where I live for example. they fend against fundamentalism just like you would. here it’s not just feminists but society as a whole, opposing the sharia or other forms of that: we do not believe that this can be a part of the ‘freedom of religion’ claim.
so before you condemn every follower of islam as ‘the same people’, ask yourself if it is not exactly the same logic employed by things like racism, sexism or other forms of wild generalization and discrimination.
p.s. I am not a moslem, I am actually with those that think the world would be better without any religions (all of them). but i am still respectful of anyone that lives by his own faith in peace without looking to influence and manipulate or oppress others.
I don’t like to discuss politics or religion on MMO blogs but this issue is far too important to the future of our civilization to politely ignore.
Islam is at the core of most of the worlds conflicts right now. Every day another atrocity is committed in the name of Islam. Children have bombs strapped on them and blow up innocents in public places in the name of Allah. Women are buried up to their heads and stoned in public for the slightest so-called crime of adultery. Whole villages of Christians are routinely slaughtered by Muslim gangs in Africa. You got a few weeks? I could list atrocity after atrocity. Go to Amnesty International if you want to read more.
We are seeing an overly tolerant and free continent of Europe being overrun with Muslim immigrants. Europe as we know it will not exist and within a few years Sharia law will be the order of the day.
Every day we hear of another lawsuit of a Muslim who is suing Disneyland or other organizations. Every day they try to get us to capitulate to them.
People have finally had it. Enough is enough. We can no longer afford to be tolerant of intolerant people.
So where are all those moderate Muslims? Why haven’t they reformed their faith? Why haven’t they spoken out about the barbarity and cruelty of their religion?
Here’s an excerpt from an article from the National Review Online by a respected commentator named Andrew McCarthy who asks this very same question:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/246272/imagining-islam-andrew-c-mccarthy?page=1
“If only the fantasy were true: If only there actually were a dominant, pro-American, echt moderate Islam, an ideology so dedicated to human rights, so sternly set against savagery, that acts of terrorism were, by definition, “un-Islamic activity.” Imagine an Islam that, far from a liability, proved an asset (indeed, an indispensable asset) in combating the threat against us. Imagine that we could accurately call the threat mere “extremism” — no “Islamic” (or even “Islamist”) modifier being necessary because the “extremists” truly were a tiny, aberrant band, fraudulently “hijacking” a great religion.
If the fantasy were true, who among us would not be proud to mark the annual observance of September 11 by breaking ground on a $100 million Islamic center cum mosque at the site of the most horrific attack in American history? In the nine years since the atrocities that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans at the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pa., such an Islam — if it really existed — would have spearheaded the defeat of America’s enemies.
Such an Islam, over nine long years, would have risen up and made itself heard. It would have identified by name and condemned with moral outrage the imposters purporting to act in its name. It would have honored America’s sacrifice of blood and treasure in the liberation of oppressed Muslim peoples. It would have said “thank you” to our troops. It would have joined America, without ambiguity or hesitation, in crushing terror networks and dismantling the regimes that abet them. It would not have needed trillion-dollar American investments to forge democracies; it would naturally have adopted democracy on its own.
What excruciating truths have we yet failed to grasp on this ninth anniversary of 9/11? The first is that such an Islam does not exist. The second is that, despite this fact, American foreign and domestic policy continues to proceed as though it does exist — and as though it were the only real Islam. That is, nine years after Islamists made their commitment to our destruction as unmistakable as possible, nine years after the non-occurrence of all the wonderful things that would certainly have happened if the Islam of our dreams were the Islam of our reality, our national-security strategy is still steeped in fiction.
Self-delusion is a convenient policy. It resists defining missions with anything but the most detached, politically correct loftiness. Serial attacks by readily identifiable enemies seamlessly become a nebulous “war on terror,” then a “long struggle against violent extremism,” then an “overseas contingency operation.” If you stubbornly avoid saying whom you’re fighting and why, pretty soon no one remembers — the better to define down success — don’t say victory. So we gradually slide from “You’re with us or you’re with the terrorists,” to “draining the swamps,” to “the forward march of freedom,” to the creation of “democracies” that are reliable American “allies in the war on terror,” to “democracy-lite, and please pass the sharia,” to “shoot for stability,” to “Why not negotiate with the Taliban? Look how well the engagement with Iran is going.”
Randomessa supplied me with a handful of relevant links, Wolfshead. I’ve been meaning to write those up separately after vetting them m’self, but it seems like this is a good time for them. Take them as is, recommended by Randomessa (in good faith) and offered in the effort to find just those “moderate” devotees of Islam:
http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/response.htm
http://www.cair.com/AmericanMuslims/AntiTerrorism.aspx
http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php
http://www.rachelwoodlock.com/home.html
http://akramsrazor.typepad.com/
http://www.islamicate.com/
http://www.pktaylor.com/
She also noted that there’s no central governing body of Islam. That does make any sort of overhaul in the direction of freedom a bit more difficult.
The problem is that those moderate devotees wont work in the same way liberal christians don’t work: they are just wrapping up secular values in a religious dress. Fundamentalists are smarter than the culture gives them credit for. They can realize when “reform” often means extinction in the long term.
Randomessa unwittingly shows the end of that-those reformers are going to create former muslims, not reform the faith. It happened to me as well: I used to be a pentecostal word of faith, and “reform” didn’t moderate that: it made me leave the belief system. Religions are not something that you can tinker with without undermining them.
As for Islam, educated western culture continually bashed Christianity for being the cause of a host of evils it didn’t. They abandoned it, and another religion without the self-analysis or tension between church and state rose up. Get used to placating it a lot. It doesn’t take well to denigrating.