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I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

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Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#181
I don't get it.

You complain that a 5000 piece lego set is movie themed, when the only thing movie themed are the minifigs and the box it came in.

As kids every single lego set we had was built into the "model" precisely once, and then dumped in with the rest of the lego. We kept the instructions, but would never rebuild the original set. That's hardly the point of Lego.

As an adult I have a huge collection of Star Wars lego sets, including the Imperial Star Destroyer and Death Star. When my son is old enough (he's not yet 3), they'll get dismantled and put in a bucket all together. From that day on they WILL be generic lego pieces. The fact that they came in a Star Wars box is then irrelevant.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#182
Lego's patent on the basic block design has run out so it's actually a pretty smart strategy of Lego to move to licensed properties over the last decade - what else could they do? I've already seen some Hello Kitty "minifigs" with Lego compatible blocks, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/expired-patent-of-the-day-l...

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#183

I don't get it. You complain that a 5000 piece lego set is movie themed, when the only thing movie themed are the minifigs and the box it came in. As kids every single lego set we had was built into the "model" precisely once, and then dumped in with the rest of the lego. We kept the instructions, but would never rebuild the original set. That's hardly the point of Lego. As an adult I have a huge collection of Star W…

Except so many of those pieces are not generic. There's dozens of color and shape specific pieces in there. Things that will never go on anything else.

That said, you can still buy generic lego boxes.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that they're identical twins, I think it's also pretty clear that this case undercuts the argument that it's all just genetics as well. Oh, and "decided he'd rather be a girl" is generally considered offensive to trans people. She believes that she's always been a girl, and did not "decide" anything of the kind. Her physical characteristics were simply misleading regarding her true gender.

>" is generally considered offensive to trans people " Isn't that just being delusional. If I decide that I should have been born as superman, does that mean you now all have to refer to me as the Man of Steel and ignore the fact that I wasn't born with the organs (X-ray eyes, etc.) that would make it possible for me to be said person. Except in cases of genetic sex indeterminacy a person is born either male or femal…

The heart of the matter is, what is gender? It's clearly not the case that gender is identical to being biologically male or female, eg, based on which sex organs are present, or on the chromosome. You need only read the Wikipedia pages on "intersex" and "third gender" to see some of the diversity in the world. Sex indeterminacy is only one of many possibilities.

Go back to the original Turing Test. In "The Imitation Game", the questioner must determine which of two people is male and female based only on written notes. (Presumably typewritten or some other means which doesn't even reveal handwriting.) If the only way to tell that a person who looks like a female is actually a male is through a close physical examination, then will you at least agree that they are doing a good job of acting as a female?

Of course there are many people who do that, including actors and cross-dressers, who see it as a different persona which they can put on or take off. For those who work hard at it, it's a sign of respect to be called "she" because it's a recognition of the effort needed to get the body language, and voice patterns, and dress style down.

But some people feel that being born male was a mistake, a birth defect. A cleft palate is a birth defect which is easily fixed nowadays. Nose jobs and breast implants and LASIK are usually voluntary procedures to change a genetic characteristic. Gender reassignment isn't as simple, but much easier pre-puberty. One worry is that the person, decades later, may decide that the choice made as a child was wrong, or at least deluded. That's why there's a lot of counseling involved.

If someone considers themself a female, takes on female gender roles, and to every extent possible acts like a female, then can you see why there's some offense that some side effects of some stupid little chromosome still make others call them a "he" instead of "she"?

That person may still be deluded. The question for you is, how do you tell the difference between a delusion and (what you consider to be the impossible case of) actually being born as the wrong sex? What are the negatives and benefits of encouraging vs. denying that delusion? Bear in mind that clearly a number of transgender people are happier having made that change.

As to your Superman example, "Superman" is a specific person from a fictional world. But suppose you thought you were Kryptonian, and you underwent hypothetical genetic tinkering and technological augmentation to get x-ray vision, super-strength, and so on. Then yes, I would call you a Kryptonian, or a human transformed into a Kryptonian if I wanted to be more precise. Just like my Dad, born Canadian, is now a US citizen. But if you just decide one day that everyone should call you "Superman", without making any effort at it, then don't be surprised if people don't agree with you. What would that effort look like? I saw a Superman impersonator on the Strip in Vegas, and would have no problems calling that person the Man of Steel.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#185
LEGO is very closed source. I'm fixing that with my http://bitbeam.org project. It's an open source hardware Lego Technic compatible building toy that you can manufacture yourself. (I lasercut my bitbeams at TechShop in San Francisco.) My long term plan is to make a bitbeam-based CNC milling machine that can make more beams. I won't just sell the "bricks", I'll open source and sell the machines that make the bricks. Opening up the manufacturing process is something I suspect LEGO would never do. Also, I'd like to see a fully open source equivalent to Mindstorms - Arduino for the electronics and Bitbeam for the mechanics.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#186

When I see these stories taking companies to task over why they sell what they do, I always wonder why nobody holds consumers to task. For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls? Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features? Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? Why doesn't McDonalds sell salads instead of fries? Why do record labels offer such crappy music? It's easy to blame the companies -- bu…

It has never occurred to me that girls don't play with Lego. My five year old daughter loves them. Hardly a tomboy either, she uses Lego to build little rooms for some little dolls to play in. She has made little desks and beds. Then she play acts with the dolls like any little girl will.

Of course, it did start with me(her dad) having fond memories of Lego as a kid and wanting to make sure my daughter had a chance to build with them. But the fact that she actually likes using them is up to her.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#187

I don't get it. You complain that a 5000 piece lego set is movie themed, when the only thing movie themed are the minifigs and the box it came in. As kids every single lego set we had was built into the "model" precisely once, and then dumped in with the rest of the lego. We kept the instructions, but would never rebuild the original set. That's hardly the point of Lego. As an adult I have a huge collection of Star W…

Except so many of those pieces are not generic. There's dozens of color and shape specific pieces in there. Things that will never go on anything else. That said, you can still buy generic lego boxes.

No, actually. These days there are very few non-generic pieces. If we're talking bionicles, then yes. But 99% of pieces in any modern set (branded or otherwise) are generic. The exception is usually things like fighter windshields (if they're called that in space?).

e.g. The Star Destroyer engines are actually wheels presumably borrowed from some other set. The Death Star as far as I can tell has no "special" pieces, nor the AT-AT, AT-ST or X-wing. The millenium falcon has a few special bits, but even they look repurposed from some other set.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#188
post #128

When I see these stories taking companies to task over why they sell what they do, I always wonder why nobody holds consumers to task. For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls? Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features? Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? Why doesn't McDonalds sell salads instead of fries? Why do record labels offer such crappy music? It's easy to blame the companies -- bu…

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give peo…

I like to rephrase that: "When you are powerless you think, There's a conspiracy. When you are powerful, you realize that people are getting what they want." With these ideas neither group has to accept any personal responsibility.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#189

This is, unfortunately, part of a trend against "make" culture. While it does impact LEGO (the tie-in stuff is pretty useless and the LEGO city sets still have more wholesome brick sets that can be used in more than one fashion), it is going on across many facet of toy manufacturing. Those of us who are parents of young children now may remember the days in school when they taught us basic programming as part of comp…

I was thinking the other day how much I really miss GW-Basic. A relatively simple set of instructions that I used at age 10 or so to start simple programming. How do I teach a 10 year old to program now? Class instantiation? Grab a bunch of libraries off the internet and put them together?

Really sad that people don't want to build things anymore. I recently fenced in my acre yard(no I don't live in SV, couldn't afford an acre over there). Six foot privacy fence. Took me months. Everybody thought I was crazy, including the guy next door who makes a living doing commercial construction. My wife's friends thought she was crazy. They would never let their husbands keep construction materials around that long. But I remember my dad building a fence years ago when I was a kid so it just seemed natural I would do it as well.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#190
post #66

It's not Lego that's "highly-problematic". They're simply trying to give the kids(parents?) of today what they want. If you follow the NPR article linked in the article, you'll see that Lego clearly did their homework before embarking on this new line. In light of this, I think it's odd for them to be accused of reinforcing stereotypes when their research showed that this is how (most) girls like to play . I do think…

Here's the article (Businessweek) amirmc is referring to: http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/lego-is-for-gir...

I read through this article the other day and it does a great job of showing the position Lego has worked themselves into and how they're trying to right the ship.

I think it is commendable that they are trying to go after the girl market with something other than princesses. I didn't like the new 'ladyfigs' at all at first either but then again, I was a little boy and I loved the minifigs. The part about boys playing with minifies in the third person but girls wanting to play in the first person really resonated with me. I never pretended that I was a minifig. If that's what I wanted to do, they should have had more individual personality. Like what they came up with.

I think the fact that they are willing to break from tradition to capture this market is a good thing. The fact that it doesn't appeal to me is probably also a sign they're doing it right.

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